WASHINGTON ? A high-profile ruling by a federal trial judge last week blocking enforcement of a law authorizing the indefinite detention of terrorism suspects is on hold for now.
Late Monday, a federal appeals court judge in New York granted the Obama administration?s request for an ?emergency? stay of the ruling, by Judge Katherine Forrest of United States District Court, who issued a permanent injunction against a provision of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2011 listing conduct that could result in detention without trial.
The Obama administration had urged the appeals court on Monday morning to block the injunction, saying that Judge Forrest?s ruling had gone beyond the new statute and jeopardized some of its existing authority to hold certain wartime prisoners under the 11-year-old Authorization for Use of Military Force against the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks.
In a one-page order, Judge Raymond J. Lothier of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit granted the interim stay until a panel of judges hold a hearing on the matter, scheduled for Sept. 28. It is not yet clear which judges on the appeals court will be assigned to the panel.
The National Defense Authorization Act was controversial in part because it was vague: Congress said that not only members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban were detainable, but also substantial supporters of those groups or of associated forces, without specifying what kind of conduct could make someone detainable and which associated forces were off limits.
The case was brought by Chris Hedges, a journalist who interacts with terrorists as part of his reporting work, and several prominent supporters of WikiLeaks. They argued that the National Defense Authorization Act provision chilled their right to free speech by creating a basis to fear that they might be placed in military detention on the basis of their activities.
The government has argued that they do not have standing because they will not be detained under the law, although it initially refused to make that assurance. It also argued that the National Defense Authorization Act did not expand its authority beyond what already existed under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, as interpreted by judges in Guant�namo Bay habeas corpus cases.
But Judge Forrest contended that the original force authorization did not cover mere supporters, as opposed to people who were part of the enemy force, and she questioned whether it covered associated forces.
The Obama administration said that a portion of her ruling was wrong and put a cloud over what it has believed to be the outer limits of its existing detention authority for prisoners picked up in the Afghanistan war zone.
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