High court rejects review of eavesdropping challenge

The Supreme Court Tuesday declined to review without comment an ACLU lawsuit against the National Security Agency over its warrantless wiretapping program. The dismissal of the suit was upheld last summer by the Sixth Circuit, which found that the plaintiffs had no standing to sue because they could not show they were harmed by the program.

However, the plaintiffs, who included journalists such as Christopher Hitchens, Tara McKelvey and James Bamford, had argued that the knowledge of the wiretapping had already impaired their ability to communicate with overseas sources, particularly those accused of having some link to terrorism. The Reporters Committee had filed an amicus brief before the Sixth Circuit, arguing that the harm to journalists’ First Amendment interests should have been sufficient to obtain standing to sue.