Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reinstated the ACLU's challenge to the no-fly list, which was brought on behalf of people who were told that they could not fly on an airplane but were not told why. More importantly, the plaintiff were never told what (if anything) they could do to get their names off the no-fly list.
The U.S. District Court in Oregon had originally dismissed the case, which was brought against the FBI. The FBI had argued that the case should have been brought against the TSA, which "administers" the no-fly list, even though the FBI created and controls the list. This was a convenient argument for the government to make since the TSA is insulated from such lawsuits. The Court of Appeals ruling means that the case can now proceed, and the government is now going to have to explain what, if any, procedural safeguards are in place to make sure that people who have done nothing wrong are not needlessly denied the ability to travel.
