Some of the actions taken as a result of the threat levels have been challenged as being illegal under the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment. For example, in November 2002, the city of Columbus, Georgia, forced all people wishing to protest at the School of the Americas to first submit to a metal detector search. The advocacy group School of the Americas Watch asked a federal trial court to enjoin the mass searches, but the court refused and simply dismissed the complaint. When the protestors appealed, the city justified the metal detector searches in part because of the "yellow" threat level. However, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit found that this was merely a "post hoc" justification for the searches, because the city had not even mentioned the terror alert system in its arguments at the trial court level. Even if the city did in fact rely on the alert system at the time it acted, said the court,