Ashcroft v. Iqbal: How the Supreme Court Rewrote Rule 8 to Immunize High-level Executive Officials from Post-9/11 Liability (A Plausible Interpretation)

Cara Shepley

“Few issues in civil procedure jurisprudence are more significant than pleading standards, which are the key that opens access to courts.”

In Ashcroft v. Iqbal, the Supreme Court of the United States considered whether Respondent Javaid Iqbal's claims against two executive-level government supervisors asserting a qualified immunity defense were sufficient to withstand dismissal. Extending a plausibility standard for Rule 12(b)(6) motions to all civil actions and limiting supervisory liability in Bivens cases to the government officials' own purposeful constitutional violations, the Court held that Iqbal had failed to allege facts giving rise to a plausible inference that Petitioners John Ashcroft and Ronald Mueller were personally liable for his grievances. In so holding, the Court refused to evaluate the complaint as a whole, thereby erroneously categorizing certain allegations as legal conclusions and exemplifying the degree to which a discretionary “plausibility” standard can lead to arbitrary dismissals based on a judge or Justice's individualized understanding of that single ambiguous word. In extending Twombly's highly flexible plausibility standard to all civil complaints faced with motions to dismiss--despite the fact that such an extension was unnecessary to resolve the case--the Court engaged in an act of judicial fiat unprecedented in the context of Rule 8. Finally, the Court failed to acknowledge its veiled reliance on the post-September 11th context when it effectively immunized two high-level officials without considering the merits of either qualified immunity or supervisory liability in relation to Iqbal's claims. Having been cited numerous times by lower courts, Iqbal has had an enormous practical impact beyond its oblique endorsements of judicial activism and non-accountability in high-level government officials. If the Court had addressed the issue of qualified immunity, it could have resolved Iqbal's case more transparently without breaking with the long-standing motion to dismiss standard. Iqbal would therefore never have become a controversial landmark procedural case with implications that are--at worst--unconstitutional, and--at best--ethically dubious.