## Facts

- Several detainees held at the United States Naval Station at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had been cleared for release but remained detained.
- The detainees engaged in a hunger strike to protest their continued confinement.
- The government implemented a force-feeding (enteral feeding) protocol using nasogastric tubes when medical staff determined feeding was necessary to preserve a detainee’s life and health.
- The protocol was described as modeled on Federal Bureau of Prisons guidance for managing hunger strikers, including criteria for identifying hunger strikers and initiating enteral feeding.
- The detainees alleged that force-feeding and related restraint practices violated U.S. and international law.
- Each detainee had an existing habeas corpus case challenging the legality of detention and sought a preliminary injunction within that habeas action to stop force-feeding.

## Issues

1. Whether challenges to force-feeding and related conditions of confinement by Guantánamo detainees are cognizable in habeas corpus or barred by the Military Commissions Act’s jurisdiction-stripping provision, 28 U.S.C. § 2241(e)(1).
2. If jurisdiction exists, whether the detainees satisfied the requirements for a preliminary injunction to halt force-feeding.

## Decision

- The D.C. Circuit held that, under circuit precedent, the detainees’ conditions-of-confinement claims (including force-feeding) could be brought in habeas and were not barred by the MCA.
- The court nevertheless affirmed the denial of preliminary injunctive relief, concluding the detainees had not shown entitlement to an injunction on the existing record.
- Judge Williams dissented, concluding the claims were not cognizable in habeas and should have been dismissed for lack of jurisdiction under the MCA.

## Legal Principles

- In the D.C. Circuit, habeas corpus may extend beyond the fact of detention to certain challenges to the manner of detention, including some conditions-of-confinement claims.
- The MCA’s jurisdiction-stripping provision does not bar habeas claims that are cognizable as habeas within circuit law as applied to Guantánamo detainees, in light of governing Supreme Court precedent recognizing enforceable habeas rights.
- Preliminary injunction relief requires satisfaction of the traditional four-factor test, and courts give substantial deference to detention officials’ judgments concerning safety, security, and medically supervised responses to hunger strikes.
- A detainee’s ability to invoke habeas jurisdiction does not, by itself, establish entitlement to interim injunctive relief against detention medical protocols.

## Conclusion

The court recognized federal jurisdiction for Guantánamo detainees to challenge force-feeding through habeas corpus but held the detainees had not met the demanding standard for a preliminary injunction to stop the government’s medically supervised force-feeding protocol.


Aamer ex rel. Aamer v. Obama, 742 F.3d 1023 (D.C. Cir. 2014)