ENROLLED
2024 Regular Session
HOUSE RESOLUTION NO. 111
BY REPRESENTATIVE OWEN
A RESOLUTION
To memorialize the United States Congress to reform the Foreign Intelligence &
Surveillance Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and restore the
rights of privacy and unreasonable search and seizure that have been taken from the
American people by actions of congress.
WHEREAS, the United States Constitution was enacted as the foundational law of
the land in 1787; and
WHEREAS, the first ten amendments of the United States Constitution contain the
inviolate and irrevocable set of God-given and inalienable rights that all persons in the
United States of America maintain; and
WHEREAS, foundational in these rights are speech, assembly, search and seizure
with a valid warrant, to face one's accuser, religion, private property, and many others; and
WHEREAS, there have been many moments in the nation's history when the arms
of government and tyrannical rules and congress have tried to curtail and subvert these
liberties and withhold the rights of citizens to further governmental objectives; and
WHEREAS, the misdeeds of government include Woodrow Wilson's Sedition Act,
which imprisoned Americans for speaking out against United States involvement in World
War I, the Palmer Raids which ushered in an era of kickdown searches and harassment of
political opponents, the imprisonment of American citizens of Japanese ancestry during
World War II, repeated and incessant violation of the Fourth Amendment by the Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and elements of the American intelligence community, and
the century long Jim Crow era, which saw tacit and active governmental measures to repress
the rights of Americans of color; and
WHEREAS, the Church Hearings of the mid 1970s brought to light many misdeeds
of the United States government and precipitated badly needed reform of federal law
enforcement and intelligence community activities; and
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WHEREAS, in 1978, the United States government took great steps and established
clear procedures for the physical and electronic surveillance and collection of foreign
intelligence information and separated out protections for United States citizens by the
Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act (FISA); and
WHEREAS, the FISA law established the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
(FISC) which is a court that holds nonpublic sessions to consider issuing federal search
warrants; and
WHEREAS, the FISC lacks many of the constitutionally provided precautions
afforded to litigants in other federal courts of law, such as the right of a private party to be
present at the proceedings; further, the FISC has been called out and cited as being the
subject of misfeasance and malfeasance by less than scrupulous intelligence and law
enforcement officers and agencies; and
WHEREAS, Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan each
established needed restraints on the intelligence community and law enforcement directed
guardrails for protection of private citizens, culminating with President Reagan's Executive
Order 12333; and
WHEREAS, Executive Order 12333 underscored the needs and requirements to
provide timely and accurate information about American enemies and underscored the
protection of constitutional rights of American citizens; and
WHEREAS, for most of the decades of the 1980s and 1990s, the intelligence
community and FBI appeared to be behaving and respecting the rights of citizens in the
United States; and
WHEREAS, in 2001, after the attack on the United States by foreign Islamic
terrorists from Southwest Asia, the United States Congress and the Bush Administration
moved with reckless haste by greatly empowering the American intelligence community,
FBI, and other federal entities by broadly expanding surveillance powers under the broad
guise of "protecting" the American citizens; and
WHEREAS, the outcome of the efforts to protect has resulted in nearly all
semblances of privacy being taken away by the actions of the United States Congress. The
outcome of the family of law passed in the aftermath of what is known as 9/11 is that no
phone is guaranteed to be private, no email communication can be considered secure, and
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the emergence of a leviathan of a police state capable of chilling suppression of our
God-given liberties; and
WHEREAS, as a result of the USA Patriot Act, a citizen can become the subject of
a purported terror investigation and directed by law not to tell anyone of an invasive search
on his home, under penalty of prison; and
WHEREAS, Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act violates the Fourth Amendment to
the United States Constitution by ignoring the prohibition of warrantless searches against
United States citizens; and
WHEREAS, Section 215 also violates the Fifth Amendment by prohibiting ex post
facto notice of warrantless searches and thereby violating the basic tenets of due process
guaranteed to citizens of the United States; and
WHEREAS, it is the American ethos to right wrongs and correct governmental errors
such as the eradication of slavery, the end of the Jim Crow era, the awarding of voting rights
to women, and many others.
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the House of Representatives does hereby
memorialize the United States Congress to fully repeal and rewrite every word of the USA
Patriot Act and does hereby implore the Congress to turn its attention to the rights of the free
people of the United States of America.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the House of Representatives implores both the
governor of the state of Louisiana and the attorney general to stand up for the citizens of our
state and not participate in any violations of any of our rights guaranteed in our Bill of
Rights, which are a product of the sacrifice of our ancestors and have been maintained by
two hundred fifty years of commitment to the rule of law and the supremacy of the
individual over the government.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that a copy of this Resolution be transmitted to the
presiding officers of the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States
Congress and to each member of the Louisiana congressional delegation.
SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
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