This could be substantially different for them. The guy is a citizen, works for an "All American" type company (Ford), etc. And the ACLU picked up the case.
I hadn't seen his story before, the ones I had seen were residents. Supposedly, there aren't very many citizens on the list:
"According to leaked documents published by The Intercept, there were more than 47,000 people on the No Fly List as of August 2013, including 800 Americans." [1]
Chebli's story does include the additional wrinkle of the recruitment, harassment, threats, etc, and thus first amendment violation petitions for relief.
If you are going to take something to the Supreme Court you want a Plaintiff who looks like a boy-scout to the press. You want to make sure that they can't retroactively dig up a reason for the guy to be on the no-fly list. It needs to be clear that the only reason that he is on that list is that he said "no, thank you" to the FBI
It's secret, so nobody knows for sure, but my guess is that most of the people on the list are not citizens, probably most are not residents either.
"According to leaked documents published by The Intercept, there were more than 47,000 people on the No Fly List as of August 2013, including 800 Americans." [1]
The recruitment and harassment beforehand is also somewhat unique.
