When she landed at Boston Logan International Airport one early morning in March, Dr. Rasha Alawieh, a Lebanese nephrologist with an H-1B visa, expected a smooth return to Brown University, where she had worked and taught. Instead, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers detained Alawieh and deported her to Lebanon.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security later said Alawieh was deported for what it described as her "ties to radical Islamic terrorism" and said she admitted to attending the funeral of Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader of Hezbollah, which is designated a foreign terrorist organization by the United States.

Seeking to return to the U.S., she filed a lawsuit challenging the CBP officers' actions as unconstitutional, arguing they exceeded their authority by denying her entry into the country and subjecting her to a five-year reentry ban.

In a federal court complaint filed in Boston focusing on the powers granted by the appointments clause in the Constitution, Alawieh said that because the border officers were never appointed by the president or the head of any federal department, their decision exceeded their powers.

"They exercised unilateral and administratively unreviewable authority to refuse to let Dr. Alawieh enter the country," she said in the complaint.

And in her filing on Aug. 26, Alawieh said the U.S. Supreme Court's June 27 ruling in Kennedy v. Braidwood Management, a case focusing on whether members of a U.S. government task force were constitutionally appointed under the clause, adds power to her argument.

In the 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court held that members of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a 16-member body that formulates evidence-based recommendations regarding preventive healthcare services, are to be considered "inferior officers" who are employed at will and whose recommendations can be reviewed and blocked by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' secretary.

The high court rejected a constitutional challenge to an Affordable Care Act provision requiring insurers to cover certain treatments at no cost to patients. In doing so, it overturned a 2024 Fifth Circuit panel decision that had found the HHS secretary lacked sufficient authority over the task force — one of several bodies that determine which preventive services must be covered without cost-sharing under the ACA.

Represented by attorneys with nonprofit civil rights group Muslim Advocates and Marzouk Law LLC, Alawieh argued that the Braidwood ruling added strength to her claim that the CBP agents who turned her around at Logan Airport did not have the constitutional authority to do so.

In that Aug. 26 filing, Alawieh argued that the procedural history of the Braidwood case bolstered her arguments further.

In that case, the U.S. government had argued that the task force members were not "officers," citing the fact that they work only part time, do not receive compensation, and their work consists only of "frequent emails," multiple conference calls each month, and three annual in-person meetings. The government had also argued that the "incidental" effect of the task force members' recommendations should not be considered when determining the extent of their authority for appointments clause purposes.

But a district court rejected both of those arguments, finding that task force members were "principal" officers whose decisions could only be performed if they were appointed by the president with Senate confirmation. The Fifth Circuit upheld that ruling, but the Supreme Court ultimately disagreed, reversing and remanding the case, and holding that the task force members were "inferior" officers that the HHS secretary could appoint under the appointments clause.

The district court in Braidwood had cited the 2018 ruling in Lucia v. Securities and Exchange Commission, where the Supreme Court held that law judges of the SEC are officers subjected to the appointments clause, to conclude that what matters in determining if a given role has "officer" status is "'the extent of power an individual wields in carrying out his assigned functions,'" according to Alawieh's filing.

Alawieh said that the Braidwood ruling solidifying the status of the task force members as officers for the purposes of the clause "amply supports" her argument that CBP agents are also officers.

In her footnotes, Alawieh emphasized that CBP agents making inadmissibility decisions at ports of entry wield even more power than the members of the health services task force.

Following Alawieh's removal to Lebanon and DHS' statements about her alleged ties to Hezbollah, a ​​team of Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP lawyers who had filed claims in federal court accusing the government of ignoring a court order not to immediately deport her abruptly withdrew from the case "as a result of further diligence."

Attorneys for Alawieh declined to comment. DHS did not return a request for comment.

Alawieh is represented by Stephanie E.Y. Marzouk of Marzouk Law LLC, and Golnaz Fakhimi and Eric Thompson Lee of Muslim Advocates.

The government is represented by Mark Sauter and Michael P. Sady of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Massachusetts.

The case is Alawieh v. Noem et al., case number 1:25-cv-10614, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

--Additional reporting by Kellie Mejdrich and Julie Manganis. Editing by Orlando Lorenzo.