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The US Supreme Court is set to hear a case involving three Muslim men in California who say they were surveilled at their mosque by the FBI after the September 11, 2001 attacks, solely on the basis of their religion. 

The case began in 2011 when three Muslim men filed a class action lawsuit alleging that the FBI paid a “confidential informant” to surveil them based solely on their religious identity. A lower court in 2012 dismissed the trio’s initial lawsuit, ruling in favour of the FBI who had cited national security risk to stop the case. On appeal, a federal appeals court later sided with plaintiffs.

According to Al Jazeera, the plaintiffs say the US government has for years used national security to dodge accountability. “That has deprived them of a chance to present in court a mountain of evidence they say shows the FBI pursued a “dragnet” surveillance campaign against the Muslim community in Southern California that included secret audio and video recording and was motivated solely by the religion of those monitored.”

The Supreme Court will consider law enforcement’s use of surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, as well as the so-called state secrets privilege defense, which permits the government to block and conceal the release of any information that it deems to be a risk to national security.

The plaintiffs have alleged that FBI has recorded hours of video and audio inside mosques, at religious meetings, inside people’s homes, casting a wide and often indiscriminate net by infiltrating diverse groups at the various Islamic institutions.

On the other hand the agency have cited national security reasons and have also contended that religion does not play any part in its surveillance.

The Supreme Court’s decision will have effect on not just the Muslim community in America, but it will also put a check on the government’s ability to put surveillance on private citizens- Ahilan Arulanantham, the faculty co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA said.

According to HuffPost, in December 2020, the Supreme Court ruled in a similar case, Tanvir v. Tanzin, finding that three Muslim men were entitled to seek damages from federal law enforcement officers who they alleged placed them on the no-fly list in an attempt to coerce them into becoming informants.

Case Title (SCOTUS): Fazaga v FBI