Targeted Justice Lawsuit: Rulings, Fikre Appeal, and FOIA Suit

The Targeted Justice lawsuit was a 2023 federal case in which the Houston nonprofit Targeted Justice, Inc. and eighteen individual plaintiffs sued Attorney General Merrick Garland, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and several senior officials, alleging that hidden subcategories of the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database were used to surveil and harass innocent Americans. Every court that reviewed the case rejected it. A federal judge in Texas dismissed the complaint as “fantastical” and “frivolous” in July 2023, the Fifth Circuit affirmed in March 2024, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari on October 7, 2024, with rehearing denied on December 9, 2024.¹

Who Filed the Lawsuit and Who They Sued

Targeted Justice, Inc. filed the complaint on January 11, 2023, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. The case was assigned to Judge Lee H. Rosenthal in the Houston Division.²

The nonprofit describes itself as a human rights organization advocating for people it calls “targeted individuals” — U.S. citizens it says have been secretly selected by federal agencies for an experimental harassment program the group traces back to the CIA’s MK-Ultra project. It joined seventeen U.S. citizens and one legal resident as co-plaintiffs, including Winter O. Calvert, Dr. Leonid Ber, Dr. Timothy Shelley, Karen Stewart, Susan Olsen, Jason Foust, and three minors identified by initials.³

The defendants were Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Terrorist Screening Center Director Charles Kable Jr., DHS Under Secretary Kenneth Wainstein, and the FBI and DHS as agencies. Each individual official was sued in both personal and official capacities.⁴

What the Complaint Alleged

The core of the lawsuit concerned the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database, maintained by the bureau’s Terrorist Screening Center. Plaintiffs focused on two subcategories they called “Handling Codes 3 and 4,” which the complaint described as covering people with “possible ties to terrorism.” Targeted Justice alleged these subcategories held the names of hundreds of thousands of Americans who did not meet the “reasonable suspicion” standard the government itself required for general TSDB inclusion.⁴

The complaint went further. Plaintiffs alleged they were subjected to directed energy weapons, “voice-to-skull” technology broadcasting abusive messages and threats around the clock, organized stalking, home break-ins, vandalism, communications tampering, and defamatory rumors intended to isolate them socially. The complaint alleged the targeting disproportionately affected women and was connected to plaintiffs’ Republican party affiliations.³

Four legal theories carried the case:

Fifth Amendment due process. Plaintiffs argued the government placed them on a secret list carrying a “badge of infamy” without notice, a hearing, or any way to seek removal.
First Amendment retaliation. Plaintiffs contended their inclusion punished protected speech, especially by whistleblowers, political activists, and dissenting scientists.
Privacy Act. Plaintiffs alleged the FBI unlawfully disseminated their personal information and “suspected terrorist” label to 18,000 law enforcement agencies, 532 corporations, and 1,440 other organizations.
Administrative Procedure Act. Plaintiffs argued that watchlisting people who did not meet the reasonable suspicion standard exceeded the authority in the Homeland Security Presidential Directive that created the framework.

How the Courts Ruled

Judge Rosenthal dismissed the complaint with prejudice on July 11, 2023, for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. The court called the allegations “fanciful,” “fantastical,” and “frivolous,” and found the claim of a secret blacklist embedded within the TSDB’s handling codes “wholly conclusory.” Only the individual plaintiffs’ Privacy Act claims escaped dismissal with prejudice.⁵

On March 8, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed. The panel called the claims “obviously frivolous,” “plainly unsubstantial,” and “so attenuated and unsubstantial as to be absolutely devoid of merit.” The court rejected the injunction request on the same ground, concluding the suit was unlikely to succeed. Both the district court and the Fifth Circuit relied on precedent including Starrett v. Lockheed Martin Corp., which had earlier been used to dismiss similar claims about voice-to-skull technology and remote neural monitoring. A petition for rehearing en banc was denied on April 24, 2024.³⁶

Attorney Ana Luisa Toledo, a member of Targeted Justice’s advisory board admitted to the bars of Puerto Rico and the First Circuit, filed a petition for a writ of certiorari on July 23, 2024, docketed as No. 24-91. The Supreme Court denied the petition on October 7, 2024, and denied rehearing on December 9, 2024. The case is closed.¹

The Fikre Argument Plaintiffs Raised on Appeal

Targeted Justice’s cert petition leaned on the Supreme Court’s unanimous 2024 decision in FBI v. Fikre, which held that the government cannot moot a watchlist challenge simply by removing a person from the No Fly List. Under Fikre, the government carries a “formidable burden” to show its challenged conduct will not recur, and vague assurances do not clear that bar.⁷

The petition made two arguments: that the lower courts had failed to accept the complaint’s well-pleaded facts as true at the dismissal stage, and that Fikre’s reasoning about watchlist due process should have forced the courts to engage with the merits rather than dismiss. Fikre concerned mootness after voluntary removal, a different question from whether allegations of an elaborate covert torture program state a plausible claim in the first place. The Supreme Court did not take up the petition.

Why Watchlist Challenges Rarely Succeed

Even setting aside the frivolousness rulings, broad constitutional challenges to the TSDB face steep odds. In Elhady v. Kable, the Fourth Circuit reversed a district court ruling that had found the database unconstitutional, holding that inclusion does not violate constitutionally protected liberty interests. The court reasoned that ordinary airport screening delays do not meaningfully restrict the right to travel, and that because the government does not publicly disclose TSDB status, reputational harm claims fall short.⁸

The Sixth Circuit in Beydoun v. Sessions and the Tenth Circuit in Abdi v. Wray reached similar conclusions. Courts have consistently pointed listed individuals toward the DHS Traveler Redress Inquiry Program as the appropriate avenue for challenging inclusion, rather than facial constitutional attacks on the watchlist system itself.⁸

What separated the Targeted Justice case from those earlier defeats was the ground on which it lost. The Elhady line addressed the merits and found no constitutional violation. In Targeted Justice, the courts never reached the merits, ruling instead that the specific allegations about directed energy weapons, voice-to-skull harassment, and a hidden blacklist inside the TSDB were too far removed from plausibility to state a claim at all.

The Separate FOIA Lawsuit

Targeted Justice also filed a related Freedom of Information Act suit against the FBI on March 1, 2024, in the Southern District of Texas’s Victoria Division, seeking records about the same Handling Codes 3 and 4 subcategories. The case went to Judge David S. Morales, who denied a series of motions from the nonprofit seeking judicial notice and contempt sanctions. On August 8, 2025, the court granted the FBI’s motion for summary judgment and entered final judgment, closing that case as well.⁹¹⁰

1
U.S. Supreme Court. Targeted Justice v. Garland, No. 24-91
2
CourtListener. Targeted Justice, Inc. v. Garland
3
U.S. Supreme Court. Targeted Justice Petition Appendix
4
U.S. Supreme Court. Targeted Justice Petition for Writ of Certiorari
5
CaseMine. Targeted Justice, Inc. v. Garland, Civil H-23-1013
6
Courthouse News Service. Directed Energy Weapons
7
U.S. Supreme Court. FBI v. Fikre, 601 U.S. 234
8
Justia. Elhady v. Kable, No. 20-1119
9
FOIA Project. Targeted Justice, Inc. v. Federal Bureau of Investigation
10
CourtListener. Targeted Justice, Inc. v. FBI, Case 6:24-cv-00005