Why it matters: The ruling decides who, if anyone, answers in court when federal agents raid the wrong home. A concurrence joined by the whole panel also asks the full 11th Circuit to revisit the rule that shielded the government in this case.
A federal appeals court has revived one part of the lawsuit brought by a Georgia family whose home an FBI SWAT team raided by mistake in 2017, and closed off another. In a published opinion filed October 7, 2026, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit affirmed summary judgment for the United States on the family's Federal Tort Claims Act counts but reversed the grant of qualified immunity to the FBI agent who led the raid. A new video from the YouTube channel Armed Scholar walks through the decision and calls the outcome "a split victory in favor of the family."
According to the opinion, the raid was part of an FBI gang investigation called Operation Red Tape. Agents held a search warrant for a house at 3741 Landau Lane in southwest Atlanta. At about 5 a.m. on October 18, 2017, a SWAT team instead broke down the door at 3756 Denville Trace, home to Hilliard Cliatt, his then-fiancée Curtrina Martin, and her seven-year-old son, and detonated a flash-bang grenade. The court describes the two homes as three houses apart. The video recounts that the family was held at gunpoint and that agents realized the error after one of them noticed the address on mail inside the house.
The lead agent, Lawrence Guerra, has said his personal Garmin GPS unit directed him to the wrong house. The opinion records that the family disputes whether he conducted an adequate site survey or a drive-by on the morning of the raid, and that he threw the Garmin away shortly after the incident, "to this day, without explanation."
Martin v. United States after the Supreme Court's 9-0 ruling
The family sued the United States under the FTCA and brought a separate Fourth Amendment claim against Guerra. The 11th Circuit ruled against them in 2024. In June 2025 the Supreme Court unanimously vacated that decision in Martin v. United States, in an opinion by Justice Neil Gorsuch. The Court held that the Supremacy Clause gives the United States no defense to FTCA suits, and that the statute's law enforcement proviso overrides only the intentional-tort exception, not the discretionary-function exception. It left the discretionary-function question for the 11th Circuit to take up on remand.
FTCA discretionary-function exception bars claims against the government
On remand, the panel of Judges Adalberto Jordan, Jill Pryor and Embry Kidd, writing per curiam, held that the discretionary-function exception bars all five FTCA counts. The exception preserves the government's immunity for conduct that involves judgment or choice grounded in policy. Applying circuit precedent, the court found that planning decisions, including whether to conduct a site survey, where to stage, how to enter and when to execute the warrant, involved judgment and policy considerations such as secrecy, timing and safety.
“The panel gave two answers about one raid: the government keeps its immunity, and the agent who led the raid does not, at least for now.”
Coleman Reyes, The ReticleThe GPS error itself was a harder question. The panel wrote that if Guerra entered the wrong address or misread the screen, "it is a much closer call" whether the conduct involved judgment or choice. Under existing precedent, it still concluded that the agent retained choices at the scene, such as checking street signs or mailboxes or consulting the geolocation data on his phone, and that those choices fell within the exception. The Armed Scholar host calls that result "very harsh" for the family.
Qualified immunity reversed for the FBI agent
On the Fourth Amendment claim, the panel reached the opposite result. It relied on Hartsfield v. Lemacks, a 1995 11th Circuit decision about officers who entered the wrong residence while executing a warrant for a nearby house. The court noted that on the morning of the raid Guerra had his GPS, Google Maps on his phone, and text alerts linking to the target's geolocation every fifteen minutes. Viewing the disputed facts in the family's favor, as the law requires at summary judgment, the panel held that a reasonable jury could find he failed to make reasonable efforts to avoid error. "Such plain incompetence has clearly violated the Fourth Amendment since at least 1995," the court wrote. The claim now returns to the district court. The ruling decides only that it may go forward; it does not resolve liability.
Concurrence calls for en banc review of the 11th Circuit precedent
Judge Jordan wrote a concurrence joined by both of his colleagues. "In this Circuit, the discretionary-function exception is a mess," he wrote, arguing that as interpreted it bars all or most FTCA suits over wrong-house raids. He compared the conduct here to "a government driver making a wrong turn onto a one-way street" and closed: "I hope that, at some point, we will convene en banc to re-examine our discretionary-function exception jurisprudence. This case seems like a good vehicle in which to do so."
The video says the family has until about November 23 to ask the full court to rehear the case. Federal appellate rules allow 45 days after judgment for a rehearing petition in a civil case where the United States is a party; counted from October 7, that period ends on Saturday, November 21, which moves the deadline to Monday, November 23. The host says he will follow whether the family seeks en banc review or proceeds against the agent in district court.
For context
- The Federal Tort Claims Act lets people sue the United States over certain torts by federal employees, subject to 13 exceptions, including the discretionary-function exception in 28 U.S.C. § 2680(a).
- Qualified immunity shields government officials from damages suits unless they violated clearly established law; the claim against the agent is brought under Bivens, the court-made cause of action against federal officers.
- The Institute for Justice represents the Cliatt-Martin family.
- Rehearing en banc means review by all of a circuit's active judges, the usual route for a circuit to overrule its own published precedent.
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Supreme Court Issues 9-0 Unanimous Ruling Leading To Major Nationwide & Constitutional Implications!
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