SCOTUS: FTCA applies to raid of the wrong house, remanded to CA11

After federal law enforcement officers raided the wrong house, which should have been evident at the time, the occupants stay in court on their FTCA claim and get to litigate the negligence claim. Martin v. United States, 2025 U.S. LEXIS 2281 (U.S. June 12, 2025). ScotusBlog is here. From the holding in the Syllabus:

1. The law enforcement proviso in [FTCA, 28 U.S.C.] § 2680(h) overrides only the intentional-tort exception in that subsection, not the discretionary-function exception or other exceptions throughout § 2680.

(a) The text and structure of § 2680 demonstrate that the law enforcement proviso applies only to the intentional-tort exception. The proviso appears within the same subsection and sentence as the intentional-tort exception, reflecting the established principle that statutory provisos generally modify only the provisions in which they appear. Section 2680 contains 13 discrete exceptions. Coupled with the lead-in clause, each exception forms a separate sentence and operates as a structurally distinct provision. The proviso addresses the same subject matter as subsection (h)—intentional torts—while other exceptions cover entirely different topics like lost mail, combat injuries, and quarantine impositions. Further, the proviso’s definitional sentence expressly limits the definition of “investigative or law enforcement officer” to “this subsection,” (i.e., subsection (h)), even though the phrase “law enforcement officer” appears elsewhere in § 2680. Congress’s choice to embed the proviso within subsection (h) rather than place it at the end of the full list of exceptions, as it sometimes does with broadly applicable provisos, further confirms the proviso’s limited application to subsection (h) alone.

(b) Petitioners’ arguments for broader application of the proviso are unpersuasive. While the proviso mirrors the language of § 2680’s lead-in clause by stating that § 1346(b) “shall apply” rather than “shall not apply,” this textual similarity does not demonstrate that the proviso applies to all exceptions, which form discrete instructions that may be understood completely without reference to other provisions. The absence of limiting language in the proviso’s first sentence does not expand its scope beyond subsection (h), as Congress accomplished that limitation through the proviso’s placement within the same sentence as the intentional-tort exception. Legislative history suggesting Congress intended to address wrong-house raids broadly cannot displace what the law’s terms clearly direct, as legislative history is not the law and Members of Congress may have had multiple purposes in mind when crafting the proviso.

2. The Supremacy Clause does not afford the United States a defense in FTCA suits. The FTCA is the “supreme” federal law governing the United States’ tort liability and serves as the exclusive remedy for damages claims arising from federal employees’ official conduct. The statute generally makes the government liable under state law on the same terms as a private individual would be liable under the law of the place where the tortious conduct occurred. Because the FTCA incorporates state law as the liability standard, there is typically no conflict between federal and state law for the Supremacy Clause to resolve. While federal law may sometimes displace state law in FTCA suits where a constitutional text or federal statute supplies controlling liability rules, the Eleventh Circuit identified no such federal statute or constitutional provision displacing Georgia tort law in this case. The court’s reliance on In re Neagle, 135 U.S. 1, is misplaced, as that 19th-century decision involved a federal officer’s immunity from state criminal prosecution for acts necessary and proper in discharging federal duties, not the federal government’s liability under a statute that expressly subjects it to state tort law on the same terms as private parties. Section 2674 specifies the defenses available to the government, including judicial or legislative immunity and other defenses to which the United States is entitled, but these do not include the Eleventh Circuit’s novel Supremacy Clause defense.
3. On remand, the Eleventh Circuit should consider whether subsection (a)’s discretionary-function exception bars either the plaintiffs’ negligent- or intentional-tort claims—undertaking that assessment without reference to the mistaken view that the law enforcement proviso applies to subsection (a). The court must then ask of any surviving claims whether, under Georgia state law, a “private individual under like circumstances” would be liable for the acts and omissions the plaintiffs allege, subject to the defenses discussed in § 2674—not a Supremacy Clause defense.

Remaining questions surrounding whether and under what circumstances the discretionary-function exception may ever foreclose a suit like this one lie well beyond the two questions the Court granted certiorari to address, and their resolution would benefit from the Eleventh Circuit’s careful reexamination of this case in the first instance.