A federal judge has thrown out most of the class action suit alleging the Bush-era Justice Department improperly rejected intern applicants, the Legal Times reports.
The suit was filed soon after a June 2008 report by the DOJ’s Inspector General found that applicants for the department’s intern and honors programs were wrongly — and systematically — screened based on political affiliations. One Harvard Law grad was declined because an article was found on the Internet in which he bemoaned his non-participation in the 1999 WTO protests.
Judge John Bates of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that five of the eight plaintiffs did not have standing because they had not reached the point in the hiring process at which the improper screening came into play.
And he tossed the parts of the suit seeking money damages against individual defendants, including Alberto Gonzales and several other Bush DOJ officials.
The three remaining plaintiffs will be allowed to pursue their claims under the Privacy Act that information about them was improperly collected.
The full opinion is here (.pdf).