American Civil Liberties Union v. Clapper, 785 F.3d 787

NSA collected bulk U.S. telephone “metadata” (call origin/termination, time, duration, device identifiers, routing) daily under FISC orders starting in 2006; program disclosed publicly in 2013 via leaked FISC orders.
Government used § 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act as the statutory basis, seeking “any tangible things” relevant to authorized foreign-intelligence investigations and requiring a relevance showing to the FISC; orders were renewed repeatedly.
Collection enabled database queries using a known phone number as a “seed” and performing iterative "hops" to discover contacts; program minimization, oversight, and later limits (e.g., cap on hops, FISC pre-approval) were adopted after public disclosure.
Plaintiffs (ACLU, NY-CLU, Verizon customers) sued, alleging § 215 did not authorize bulk collection and asserting Fourth and First Amendment claims; district court dismissed and denied preliminary injunction; plaintiffs appealed.
The Second Circuit (Lynch, J.) held plaintiffs had Article III standing, rejected the government’s implied-preclusion arguments under the APA and related statutes, and concluded § 215 does not authorize the bulk telephone-metadata program; vacated dismissal and remanded; declined to decide constitutional claims.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Standing	Plaintiffs’ records were collected; seizure itself is concrete injury	Plaintiffs lack imminent injury because records may never be queried/reviewed	Plaintiffs have standing to sue for seizure of metadata held in government database
Implied preclusion of APA review	APA review remains available; § 215’s FISC review does not bar district-court suits by targets	§ 215’s sealed, specialized FISC review process implies Congress precluded APA suits by targets	No implied preclusion; strong APA presumption of review controls; § 215/§2712 do not bar plaintiffs’ statutory suit
Statutory authorization under § 215	§ 215’s “relevant to an authorized investigation” does not permit wholesale, ongoing bulk collection and indefinite archiving for future queries	Relevance is broad (grand-jury/subpoena analogy); bulk collection is permissible to enable analytic techniques	§ 215 does not authorize the telephone metadata program; government’s relevance reading is unacceptably broad and lacks limiting principle
Preliminary injunction	Unlawful program merits injunctive relief; irreparable harm presumed	National security interests and impending congressional action counsel against injunction now	Despite plaintiffs’ likelihood of success on statutory claim, court denies immediate injunction and remands for further proceedings, citing imminent statutory sunset and congressional process

United States v. U.S. Dist. Court (Keith), 407 U.S. 297 (1972) (rejecting warrantless domestic security surveillance and prompting FISA)
Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967) (Fourth Amendment protects reasonable expectations of privacy)
Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735 (1979) (no legitimate expectation of privacy in numbers dialed revealed to telephone company)
United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400 (2012) (GPS long-term tracking raised Fourth Amendment concerns; plurality addressed trespass)
United States v. Miller, 425 U.S. 435 (1976) (no reasonable expectation of privacy in bank records held by third party)
Clapper v. Amnesty Int’l USA, 568 U.S. 398 (2013) (standing requires certainly impending injury; speculative chains insufficient)
Block v. Cmty. Nutrition Inst., 467 U.S. 340 (1984) (statutory scheme providing detailed review at behest of particular persons can imply preclusion of APA review)
Bowen v. Mich. Acad. of Family Physicians, 476 U.S. 667 (1986) (strong presumption favoring judicial review under APA)