Humanitarian Law Project, et al. v. Reno and Humanitarian Law Project, et al. v. U.S. Department of Justice

Synopsis

Humanitarian Law Project, et al. v. Reno is a case challenging the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) of 1996, which made it a crime punishable by up to ten years of imprisonment and fines to provide "material support," including humanitarian aid, literature distribution and political advocacy, to any foreign agency that the Secretary of State has designated as "terrorist." This is a companion case to Humanitarian Law Project, et al. v. Ashcroft and Humanitarian Law Project, et al. v. U.S. Department of Treasury.

Status

Description

Humanitarian Law Project, et al. v. Reno is a case filed on behalf of the Humanitarian Law Project and several Tamil-American organizations with the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in Los Angeles. It challenges the constitutionality of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) of 1996 which makes it a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison to provide "material support” to any foreign group the Secretary of State has designated as a terrorist organization.

The lead plaintiff in this case is the Humanitarian Law Project (HLP), a Los Angeles-based non-profit with consultative status to the United Nations that advocates for the peaceful resolution of armed conflicts and for worldwide compliance with humanitarian law and human rights law. HLP wanted to assist the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) with conflict resolution and human rights monitoring in Turkey.

Also represented in the cases are several Tamil-American organizations – Ilankai Thamil Sangam, Tamils of Northern California, Federation of Tamil Sangams of North America, the Tamil Welfare and Human Rights Committee, and World Tamil Coordinating Committee – and two individuals, Dr. Nagalingam Jeyalingam, a Tamil-American physician, and Ralph Fertig, HLP president and former judge, who sought to provide medical assistance to tsunami victims and expertise to improve healthcare in war-ravaged northeast Sri Lanka, which would require working with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), an advocate for self-determination of the Tamils in Sri Lanka.

Both the PKK and the LTTE have been designated as “terrorist” organizations by the Secretary of State.

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) contends that the challenged provisions violate the First Amendment insofar as they criminalize the provision of material support through the distribution of literature, engaging in political advocacy, participating in peace conferences, training in human rights advocacy, and donating cash and humanitarian assistance, when that support is solely intended to promote the lawful and non-violent activities of a designated organization. Plaintiffs' principal complaint is that the AEDPA imposes guilt by association by punishing moral innocents not for their own culpable acts, but for the culpable acts of the groups they have supported. The AEDPA does not require any proof of intent to further terrorist or other illegal activity.

Timeline

In 1998, the suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in Los Angeles. The plaintiffs moved for a preliminary injunction that would declare the challenged provisions to be in violation of the First Amendment and that would enjoin the government from enforcing them.

On June 15, 1999, Judge Audrey Collins of the Federal District Court for the Central District of California issued a mixed opinion. Her opinion rejected the plaintiffs' argument that the challenged provisions violate the First Amendment insofar as they criminalize material support that is solely intended to further the lawful purposes and activities of a designated organization. However, she ruled in favor of plaintiffs by holding that the parts of the law criminalizing the provision of material support in the form of "personnel" and "training" were unconstitutionally vague. She found that these provisions "d[id] not . . . appear to allow persons of ordinary intelligence to determine what type of training or provision of personnel is prohibited" and, furthermore, "appeared to prohibit activity protected by the First Amendment: distributing literature and information and training others to engage in advocacy." Judge Collins also issued a narrowly tailored preliminary injunction barring the government from prosecuting any of the eight plaintiffs in the suit or any members of the organizational plaintiffs under AEDPA for providing "personnel" or "training" to the PKK or the LTTE.

On March 3, 2000, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit affirmed Judge Collins' opinion in full and maintained her preliminary injunction. The Ninth Circuit agreed with CCR that the AEDPA is unconstitutional to the extent that it bars the provision of "training" and "personnel." These terms are so vague that they could be understood to prohibit core political speech protected by the First Amendment. However, the Ninth Circuit did not agree with CCR that the provisions violated the First Amendment by imposing guilt through one's association rather than through one's own culpable acts.

In March 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to accept the case for review. The case returned to the district court, where Judge Collins again ruled as she had previously and converted the preliminary injunction into a permanent injunction.

On December 3, 2003, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld its prior rulings that the AEDPA is unconstitutionally vague.