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WASHINGTON -- Supreme Court justices voiced concern Wednesday about including former Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller in a lawsuit that contends that prisoners detained after the Sept. 11 attacks were abused because of their religion and ethnicity.
Yet the court offered no clear indication that it was prepared to order Ashcroft and Mueller removed from a suit filed by Javaid Iqbal, a Pakistani Muslim who spent nearly six months in solitary confinement in New York in 2002.
The case will help determine when Cabinet officers and other high-ranking officials can be sued over allegations that lower-level government workers have violated people's civil rights.
Iqbal, since deported from the United States, says Ashcroft, Mueller and others implemented a policy of confining detainees in highly restrictive conditions because of their religious beliefs or race.
"The question here is, who is responsible?" said Alexander Reinert, Iqbal's Yonkers, N.Y.-based lawyer.
A federal appeals court said the lawsuit could proceed. The New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that Ashcroft, Mueller and 32 other former and current government employees named in the lawsuit may eventually be dismissed as defendants if evidence shows they were not sufficiently involved in the activities to support a finding of personal liability.
The appeals court ruling may offer the justices a way to resolve the case narrowly.
* The case is Ashcroft and Mueller v. Iqbal, 07-1015.
