## Facts

- Nasser Al-Aulaqi sued federal officials in their official capacities, seeking relief on his own behalf and as “next friend” of his adult son, Anwar Al-Aulaqi, a dual U.S.–Yemeni citizen in Yemen.
- The complaint alleged the government had authorized Anwar Al-Aulaqi for “targeted killing” outside a conventional battlefield based on alleged ties to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and involvement in planned attacks.
- Plaintiff sought prospective declaratory and injunctive relief barring intentional killing of his son unless he posed a “concrete, specific, and imminent” threat and lethal force was the only reasonable means to neutralize it.
- Claims included alleged violations of the Fifth Amendment (due process), Fourth Amendment, and an Alien Tort Statute theory premised on alleged extrajudicial killing under international law.
- Defendants moved to dismiss on threshold grounds, including lack of standing, political question, equitable discretion, lack of an ATS cause of action, and state secrets.

## Issues

1. Whether the father had Article III standing either (a) as “next friend” to assert his adult son’s rights or (b) based on his own asserted injuries.
2. Whether the requested judicial limits on overseas lethal targeting decisions presented a nonjusticiable political question.
3. Whether the court should decline prospective injunctive relief as an exercise of equitable discretion in light of the relief’s operational and national-security implications.
4. Whether the Alien Tort Statute supplied a cause of action for the requested relief based on an asserted international-law prohibition on extrajudicial killing.
5. Whether the case was barred by the state secrets privilege.

## Decision

- The court granted the motion to dismiss and dismissed the action.
- The father lacked standing as “next friend” because he did not show his adult son was unable to litigate his own rights.
- The father lacked standing on his own behalf because his asserted harms were derivative of alleged violations of his son’s rights and not a cognizable personal legal injury.
- Independently, the requested relief was nonjusticiable under the political question doctrine because it would require courts to supervise predictive, intelligence-driven targeting decisions committed to the political branches.
- The ATS claim failed because it did not rest on a sufficiently definite, universally accepted international-law norm supporting the requested relief, and the statute was treated as jurisdictional rather than a general source of new causes of action.
- The court did not decide the merits of the constitutional claims or rely on the state secrets privilege because dismissal was warranted on other threshold grounds.

## Legal Principles

- A litigant must establish Article III standing; third-party or “next friend” standing requires a showing that the real party in interest cannot litigate and that the “next friend” is an appropriate representative.
- A plaintiff cannot establish standing based solely on injuries that are derivative of alleged violations of another person’s constitutional rights.
- Claims may be dismissed as political questions when they seek judicial resolution of matters constitutionally committed to the political branches and lack judicially manageable standards, particularly in military, foreign affairs, and national-security operations.
- Prospective equitable relief may be denied where it would entail ongoing judicial supervision of sensitive executive functions.
- The Alien Tort Statute does not itself create broad new causes of action; any claim must be grounded in a clearly defined and universally accepted norm of international law applicable in the context presented.

## Conclusion

The court dismissed a pre-enforcement challenge to an alleged authorization to use lethal force against a U.S. citizen overseas because the father lacked standing to sue either as “next friend” or in his own right, and because the relief sought would require judicial oversight of national-security targeting decisions deemed nonjusticiable; an asserted ATS basis for relief also failed, and the court did not reach the merits or the state secrets issue.


Al-Aulaqi v. Obama, 727 F. Supp. 2d 1 (D.D.C. 2010)