Pro Bono Clients Win Appeal in Lawsuit Challenging Unlawful Surveillance Practices

On October 21, 2026, the Oregon Court of Appeals ruled in favor of our pro bono clients in a lawsuit against the Oregon Department of Justice (ODOJ) regarding its authority to operate a domestic intelligence unit called the Oregon Terrorism Information Threat Analysis Network Fusion Center (TITAN).

The lawsuit, filed in 2021 by Cleary Gottlieb, the Policing Project at NYU School of Law, and Davis Wright Tremaine LLP on behalf of a group of social justice advocates, sought a declaration that TITAN’s operations are ultra vires and an injunction preventing TITAN’s unlawful operations.

The complaint alleges that TITAN, which collects and distributes information on Oregon residents gathered from, among others, law enforcement agencies and private companies, is not authorized by statute and has therefore been insulated from meaningful democratic accountability. The complaint further alleges that TITAN has repeatedly abused its unchecked power to target law-abiding members of the Oregon public, including Plaintiffs, who were subject to surveillance because they participated in peaceful protests.

The Oregon Court of Appeals found that the trial court had erred in granting the defendants’ motion for judgment on the pleadings, and specifically in its conclusion that ODOJ had the necessary statutory authority for TITAN to undertake such information-gathering and dissemination activities. Citing the canon that legislatures do not “hide elephants in mouseholes,” the Oregon Court of Appeals found that TITAN’s operations “seem elephantine in comparison to the authorities cited by the defendants” and agreed that our “factual allegations…are unsettling.” It reversed the trial court’s judgment, remanded the case, and awarded costs to our clients.

The Cleary team included partner Jeffrey Rosenthal and associates Patrick Swiber, Nathaniel (Nate) Reynolds, Mitchell Kohles, and Ami Ishikawa.