Federal Aviation Administration v. Cooper

Federal Aviation Administration v. Cooper
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued November 30, 2011 Decided March 28, 2012
Full case name	Federal Aviation Administration, Social Security Administration, United States Department of Transportation, Petitioners v. Stanmore Cawthon Cooper
Docket no.	10-1024
Citations	566 U.S. 284 (more) 132 S. Ct. 1441; 182 L. Ed. 2d 497; 2012 U.S. LEXIS 2539; 80 U.S.L.W. 4289; 23 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 222
Argument	Oral argument
Case history
Prior	Summary judgment for respondent, 816 F. Supp. 2d 778 (N.D. Cal. 2008); reversed and remanded, 596 F.3d 538 (9th Cir. 2010); rehearing denied, 622 F.3d 1016 (9th Cir. 2010); cert. granted, 564 U.S. 1018 (2011).
Holding
The authorization of suits against the government for “actual damages” in the Privacy Act of 1974 is not sufficiently clear to constitute a waiver of sovereign immunity from suits for mental and emotional distress.
Court membership
Chief Justice John Roberts Associate Justices Antonin Scalia · Anthony Kennedy Clarence Thomas · Ruth Bader Ginsburg Stephen Breyer · Samuel Alito Sonia Sotomayor · Elena Kagan
Case opinions
Majority	Alito, joined by Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas
Dissent	Sotomayor, joined by Ginsburg, Breyer
Kagan took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.
Laws applied
Privacy Act of 1974

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Federal Aviation Administration v. Cooper

Federal Aviation Administration v. Cooper, 566 U.S. 284 (2012), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that "actual damages" under the Privacy Act of 1974 is not clear enough to allow damages for suits for mental and emotional distress.^[1] The reasoning behind this is that the United States Congress, when authorizing suit against the government, must be clear in waiving the government's sovereign immunity.