CFC: No jurisdiction over a Fourth Amendment claim

The Court of Federal Claims lacks jurisdiction over Bivens claims against individual officers. [The Court of Federal Claims has no jurisdiction over what happens in the criminal justice system.] Taylor v. United States, 2008 U.S. Claims LEXIS 462 (October 29, 2008):

Nothing in plaintiffs’ complaint raises the specter of an unreasonable search and seizure by defendant. More fundamentally, for purposes of this court’s jurisdictional analysis, the Fourth Amendment is not a money-mandating constitutional provision. See, e.g., Fry v. United States, 72 Fed. Cl. 500, 507 (2006) (“As a matter of law, the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable search and seizure … [is] not money-mandating.”); Hanford v. United States, 63 Fed. Cl. 111, 119 (2004) (“‘[V]iolations of 4th [A]mendment search and seizure’ are ‘excluded’ from the jurisdiction of this court because the Fourth Amendment is not a money-mandating constitutional provision.” (quoting Stephenson v. United States, 58 Fed. Cl. 186, 192 (2003))). Furthermore, although the Supreme Court held in Bivens “that a party may, under certain circumstances, bring an action for violations of constitutional rights against Government officials in their individual capacities[,] … [t]he Tucker Act grants the Court of Federal Claims jurisdiction over suits against the United States, not against individual federal officers.” Brown v. United States, 105 F.3d 621, 624 (Fed. Cir. 1997). The court, therefore, lacks jurisdiction to entertain these claims.