On May 18, 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a case raising sensitive national security issues, voted 5-4 to dismiss a damages action against former Attorney General John Ashcroft and current FBI Director Robert Mueller. The Court held that the case could not proceed through discovery in the absence of factual allegations from the plaintiff to support his claim that Ashcroft and Mueller intentionally discriminated against him because of his ethnic and religious background (he is a Pakistani Muslim) in deciding to hold him in solitary confinement. The decision was a victory for WLF and its clients, a bi-partisan group of former Attorneys General (William P. Barr, Griffin Bell, Benjamin Civiletti, Edwin Meese III, and Richard Thornburgh) and FBI Directors (William S. Sessions and William H. Webster), who had urged the Court to reverse an appeals court decision that permitted the case to proceed through discovery.