Can Feds Be Sued? Supremes to Decide

The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether a Wyoming man can sue employees of the Bureau of Land Management personally under federal racketeering laws. He contends that the BLM officials pulled his grazing permits in an effort to force him to provide road easements on his land. Ordinarily, federal employees are protected from lawsuits by sovereign immunity when performing their official duties. Update, 12/6/06, 2:27 p.m.: David H. Rosenbloom of the School of Public Affairs at American University, enlightens me on the issues at stake here, as follows: "An important exception to official immunity (not actually sovereign immunity) is that federal employees can be sued for 'constitutional torts,' that is, actions within the framework of their jobs that violate individuals' clearly established constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known. This standard was established by the Supreme Court in Harlow v. Fitzgerald in 1982."