The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has returned a lawsuit against a Boeing Co. subsidiary accused of helping the government fly terrorism suspects to countries where torture is practiced back to a lower court for further consideration.
A three-judge panel on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said the government had not demonstrated that the lawsuit would reveal state secrets and instructed U.S. District Judge James Ware to reconsider his earlier ruling against allowing the case to proceed.
The American Civil Liberties filed the 2007 lawsuit against Jeppesen Dataplan, a San Jose-based subsidiary of Boeing, on behalf of five terrorism suspects who alleged the company contracted with the U.S. government to fly them to countries where they were tortured. The Obama administration stirred controversy when it earlier defended the Bush administration’s position that pursuit of the case would reveal state secrets.
