McManis Faulkner announces that Rahinah Ibrahim v. Department of Homeland Security et al. was selected by the Daily Journal as one of 2014’s “Top Plaintiff Verdicts by Impact.” The nation’s first “No-Fly List” trial was profiled in the Feb. 18, 2015 issue of the Daily Journal as part of its “Top Verdicts” supplement.
In a case that received international media attention, the McManis Faulkner team represented Dr. Rahinah Ibrahim, a Malaysian scholar who lived for many years in the U.S. before her visa was revoked, in the first case to successfully challenge the placement of an individual on a post-9/11 watchlist. Dr. Ibrahim alleged that she was erroneously placed on the “no-fly” list and other U.S. government terrorist watch lists, in violation of her due process rights.
The McManis Faulkner trial team of James McManis, Elizabeth Pipkin, Christine Peek, Ruby Kazi and Jennifer Murakami took on more than a dozen U.S. government lawyers over the course of nearly nine years of procedural wrangling, including two dismissals of Dr. Ibrahim’s case by the District Court, both reversed by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The trial team ultimately forced the Government to admit—after it fought to keep the facts hidden from the public—that Dr. Ibrahim posed no threat to national security and that she was mistakenly placed on the No-Fly list due to a bureaucratic blunder. As a result, the same judge who had twice dismissed the case ruled in Dr. Ibrahim’s favor, ordering that her name be cleared.
The decision found that Dr. Rahinah Ibrahim does not pose, and never has posed, a threat to national security. The Court further found that Dr. Ibrahim’s due process rights were violated when the Government failed to rectify the many “suspicious adverse effects” of mistakenly placing her on the No-Fly List in 2004.
.png)