FEDERAL TORT CLAIMS ACT – POLICE MISCONDUCT

Martin v. United States, 145 S. Ct. 1689 (Decided June 12, 2025) Gorsuch, Justice.
JUSTICE GORSUCH delivered the opinion of the Court. If federal officers raid the wrong house, causing property damage and assaulting innocent occupants, may the homeowners sue the government for damages? The answer is not as obvious as it might be. All agree that the Federal Tort Claims Act permits some suits for wrong-house raids. But the scope of the Act’s permission is much less clear. This case poses two questions about the Act’s application: one concerning the FTCA’s sovereign-immunity waiver, and the other touching on the defenses the United States may assert.
The FTCA allows those injured by federal employees to sue the United States for damages. The statute achieves that end by waiving, in 28 U. S. C. §1346(b), the federal government’s sovereign immunity for “certain torts committed by federal employees acting within the scope of their employment.” Brownback v. King, 592 U. S. 209, 212
(2021) (internal quotation marks omitted). But the statute’s waiver is subject to 13 exceptions that claw back the government’s immunity in certain circumstances. Set out in §2680, most of these 13 exceptions are obviously inapplicable to suits alleging police misconduct within the United States. But two in particular—the discretionary-function exception and the intentional-tort exception—sometimes come into play.
In a suit like this one, most courts begin by assessing the intentional-tort exception. Located in subsection (h) of §2680, it prohibits claims alleging any of 11 enumerated torts. But the exception is itself subject to a “law enforcement proviso.” Millbrook v. United States, 569 U. S. 50, 55 (2013). That proviso countermands the exception with respect to six intentional torts (including assault, battery, false imprisonment, and false arrest) against “investigative or law enforcement officers.” §2680(h). So if a plaintiff alleges that a federal law enforcement officer committed one or more of those six torts, the proviso will ensure those claims survive an encounter with the intentional-tort exception. Id., at 55–56.
Next, most courts turn to the discretionary-function exception. Housed in subsection (a) of §2680, this exception bars “[a]ny claim” based on the exercise of an official’s
“discretionary function.” Faced with that instruction, most courts ask whether the exception precludes any of the plaintiff ’s remaining tort claims. And here, the answer is often less clear cut. The discretionary-function exception, this Court has said, forbids suits challenging decisions that “involv[e] an element of judgment or choice” of a “kind that the . . . exception was designed to shield.” United States v. Gaubert, 499 U. S. 315, 322–323 (1991) (alteration in original; internal quotation marks omitted). But several of our lower court colleagues report that they have “struggl[ed]” to discern what this direction requires of them. See, e.g., Xi v. Haugen, 68 F. 4th 824, 842 (CA3 2023)
(Bibas, J., concurring). So, for example, some lower courts have held that the discretionary-function exception does not shield “careless” or “unconstitutional” police conduct from judicial scrutiny, but others have taken a contrary view and read the exception much more broadly. Id., at 843; Pet. for Cert. 28–34.
Finally, if any of the plaintiff ’s claims survive the discretionary-function exception and thus fall within the FTCA’s waiver of sovereign immunity, courts turn to a third question: Is the government liable to the plaintiff on the merits? When it comes to that question, the FTCA provides that the government will usually be liable to the plaintiff if a “private individual under like circumstances,” §2674, would be liable under “the law of the place” where the government employee’s wrongful “act or omission occurred,” §1346(b)(1). Ordinarily, then, courts will find for the plaintiff if he can demonstrate that federal officials committed a tort under applicable state law. See Brownback, 592 U. S., at 218.
Applying its unique approach to this case, the Eleventh Circuit held that the law enforcement proviso spared the plaintiffs’ intentional-tort claims from both the intentional tort and the discretionary-function exceptions. It dismissed the plaintiffs’ negligence claims under the discretionary function exception because, in its view, Agent Guerra
“enjoyed discretion in how he prepared for the warrant execution.” And on the merits of the plaintiffs’ (remaining) intentional-tort claims, the court held that the government had a winning Supremacy Clause defense. As a result, the Eleventh Circuit concluded, the United States was entitled to summary judgment.
We agreed to take this case to examine the distinctive features of the Eleventh Circuit’s approach—namely (1) whether the law enforcement proviso overrides not just the intentional-tort exception but also the discretionary-function exception, and (2) whether the Supremacy Clause affords the United States a defense in FTCA suits.
The FTCA is the “supreme” federal law addressing the United States’ liability for torts committed by its agents. It supplies the “exclusive remedy” for damages claims arising out of federal employees’ official conduct. See Hui v. Castaneda, 599 U. S. 799, 806
(2010). And, as we have seen, the government will usually be liable if a “private individual under like circumstances,” §2674, “would be liable to the claimant in accordance with the law of the place where the act or omission occurred,” §1346(b)(1). Accordingly, a plaintiff may generally prevail in an FTCA suit by demonstrating that “the State in which the alleged misconduct occurred would permit a cause of action for that misconduct to go forward.” Carlson v. Green, 446 U. S. 14, 23 (1980).
Where does all that leave the case before us? We can say this much: The plaintiffs’ intentional-tort claims survive their encounter with subsection (h) thanks to the law enforcement proviso, as the Eleventh Circuit recognized. But it remains for that court on remand to consider whether subsection (a)’s discretionary-function exception bars either the plaintiffs’ negligent- or intentional-tort claims. As we have explained, the Eleventh Circuit must undertake that assessment without reference to its mistaken view that the law enforcement proviso applies to subsection (a). Should some or all of the plaintiffs’ claims survive the discretionary function exception, the Eleventh Circuit must then ask whether, under Georgia state law, a “private individual under like circumstances” would be liable for the acts and omissions the plaintiffs allege, subject to the defenses discussed in §2674—not a Supremacy Clause defense nowhere mentioned there.
We readily acknowledge that different lower courts have taken different views of the discretionary-function exception. We acknowledge, too, that important questions surround whether and under what circumstances that exception may ever foreclose a suit like this one. But those questions lie well beyond the two we granted certiorari to address. And before addressing them, we would benefit from the Eleventh Circuit’s careful reexamination of this case in the first instance. It is work enough for the day to answer the questions we took this case to resolve, clear away the two faulty assumptions on which that court has relied in the past, and redirect it to the proper inquiry.
The judgment of the Eleventh Circuit is vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.