Tucson.com Howard Fischer 4/12/2019
The Trump administration wants the U.S. Supreme Court to conclude that the mother of a Mexican teen shot by a Border Patrol agent through the fence at Nogales has no right to sue.
In a legal brief filed Thursday, Solicitor General Noel Francisco told the justices that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals got it wrong when it found that Araceli Rodriguez has a right to bring her claim in federal courts even though her son Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez was shot and died in Mexico.
Francisco said there is a presumption against federal courts exercising jurisdiction over events that did not occur in this country. The factors cited by the 9th Circuit in giving the mother the right to sue do not override that presumption, he said.
The high court will decide the issue because the 5th Circuit, hearing a similar case out of Texas, concluded there was no right of the survivors to sue — a ruling Francisco said the court there got right.
Elena Rodriguez, 16 at the time, was in Mexico, near the international border fence in Nogales, when Lonnie Swartz fatally shot him from the Arizona side on Oct. 10, 2012.
More:
https://tucson.com/news/local/trump-administration-contends-mother-has-no-right-to-sue-over/article_e9961899-dc97-5821-937e-6033b4131833.html
