Four days before a Federal judge was scheduled to hear arguments in a lawsuit brought by four Muslim US citizens who were placed on the US government’s “no-fly” list to try to pressure them into becoming informants for the FBI, the government has notified the plaintiffs in the case that all of them have been removed from the no-fly list.

The plaintiffs in Tanvir v. Lynch are continuing to press their claims, as are other US citizens challenging their placement on the no-fly list in retaliation for declining to inform on their friends, families, communities, and fellow worshippers.  But we expect that, as has been its pattern, the government defendants will now try to get the case dismissed as “moot“.

So far as we know, every other instance in which the US government has told anyone whether or not they are or were on the no-fly list, or that they have been removed from that list, has come after the victims of these no-fly orders have challenged them in Federal court.

Either (1) the government never had any reason to think any of these people posed a threat to aviation, but never bothered to assess the basis, if any, for belief that they posed such a threat until faced with the imminent need to defend their blacklisting to a Federal judge. Or (2) the government genuinely (although mistakenly and without any adequate basis) believed that they posed a threat, but saw the possibility of judicial review of no-fly decisions as a greater threat to the standard operating procedures of the TSA, DHS, and FBI. Or (3) both of the above.

We’ll take Door Number 3, if you please.