Court Documents in Hedges et al v. Barack Obama

Round One is a group of individuals who have stepped forward because we have reason to believe we face the potential for serious harm under the NDAA. However, while the language of this law is so broad and vague, it could affect anyone. For this reason, In Round Two, we will be opening this lawsuit up to the entire US public and citizens of other nations. Then, you can either sign up to publicly support this lawsuit, or consider becoming an actual plaintiff. We are offering both options because we need to make sure our legal case is as strong as possible. More info soon, so stay tuned!

1. The Act improperly authorizes that civilians in the United States be detained indefinitely by the military, that they be tried by military commission or military court and that they may be subject to removal to other jurisdictions in violation of the Amendments V and VI of the Constitution.

2. The Act fails to give reasonable notice of the acts and conduct that will render a person liable to military detention and is overbroad thereby chilling and impinging upon protexted expressive and associative acts.

Plaintiffs’ challenge to section 1021 must be rejected. Properly understood, section 1021 merely restates the detention authority that the government already had under the AUMF. In the statute’s own words, it “affirms” the AUMF’s detention authority while expressly not “expand[ing]” it, and defines those “covered persons” who may be detained in terms no more broad than the government has advanced before the courts—and that the courts have upheld—for years. Based on their misunderstandings of the law, plaintiffs now purport to fear that they will be subjected to indefinite military detention simply for their political views and expression. But those fears are baseless. Plaintiffs do not assert that they or anyone similarly situated have ever been detained or threatened with detention under the identical preexisting authority provided by the AUMF. Nor can they demonstrate that their subjective fears are reasonable in light of the government’s implementation of its detention authority under the AUMF. For those reasons, plaintiffs lack standing, and therefore are unable to demonstrate a likelihood of success in this action, irreparable harm, or a balance of the equities involved that tips in their favor. Plaintiff’s motion for a preliminary injunction, therefore, should be denied.