Civil liberties groups cannot sue the federal government to stop President Bush's warrantless domestic spying program, according to a ruling from a divided panel of the federal appeals court in Cincinnati.
The ACLU brought the lawsuit on behalf of reporters, academics, and others who believe their phone calls and e-mails may have been intercepted in the Bush administration's domestic spying program.They argued that those wiretaps inhibit speech and unconstitutionally violate Americans' privacy.
The problem with that argument, according to the new ruling, is that the people who filed the lawsuit can't prove that they have been spied on. And if they haven't been spied on, they haven't been harmed by the program.
Continuing in that train of thought, the court ruled, if they haven't personally suffered any injury from the program, then they don't have standing to file a lawsuit. For that reason, the court ordered that the case be thrown out.
The records of who has been spied on are top secret. So there's effectively no way for anyone to prove they were personally subjected to the program.
But Judge Ronald Lee Gilman said he would have ruled against the Bush administration. He said the groups were harmed by the wiretaps, whether or not they were personally targeted. Further, he believes the program violates the laws governing domestic spying.
The judge wrote, "the president does not have the inherent authority to act in disregard of those statutes."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11784448
...in terms of American democracy (to whatever extent might might agree that it has existed), is that Congress, the "people's branch" of the government, has almost entirely abdicated its responsibility to address this (and a number of other) power grabs by the executive branch.
In terms of limiting the standing of average people in court, that is part of a much larger project by activist conservative judges to prevent the federal government (which conservatives supposedly are opposed to) from being challenged from below. This seeming contradiction makes sense when you realize that the move is designed to prevent Americans from taking advantage of the democratic reforms of the 1960s and 70s, like the Civil Rights Act, which Republican presidential administrations have been actively thwarting since Reagan. The rightward turn of the courts is a real feather in the cap of the conservative movement -- its impact is going to long outlast the death of the movement itself.