Kwai Fun Wong v. United States

This appeal presents a set of thorny procedural and substantive questions implicating several areas of constitutional and immigration law. These questions include: the scope of some of the jurisdiction-stripping provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), as amended by the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA) 1 ; the boundaries of the constitutional protections afforded certain aliens returning from abroad; and the availability of a qualified immunity defense to federal officials facing Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) 2 claims. Yet, as this is an appeal from a denial of a motion to dismiss on grounds largely of qualified immunity, we are asked to decide these weighty questions aided only by the skeletal — at best — factual picture sketched out in the complaint.

The confluence of two well-intentioned doctrines, notice pleading and qualified immunity, give rise to this exercise in legal decisionmaking based on facts both hypothetical and vague. On one hand, the federal courts may not dismiss a complaint unless “it is clear that no relief could be granted under any set of facts that could *957 be proved consistent with…