The United States Supreme Court case, UNITED STATES v. S. A. EMPRESA DE VIACAO AEREA RIO GRANDENSE (VARIG AIRLINES) et al., 1983, revolved around the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) "spot-check" system for certifying aircrafts' compliance with safety regulations and whether this constituted a discretionary function within the meaning of the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA). The FAA had been sued by two airlines - Varig Airlines and Trans World Airlines - after they suffered losses due to fires on their planes that were traced back to design defects which should have been caught during certification inspections but weren't because of the spot-check approach used by FAA inspectors. The court ruled in favor of the U.S government stating that decisions about how best to allocate limited resources for safety checks fell under policy judgment or discretion protected from liability under FTCA's discretionary function exception clause.

In the dissenting opinion for the case United States v. S.A. Empresa De Viacao Aerea Rio Grandense (Varig Airlines), Justice Stevens argued that the majority's decision to absolve FAA of any responsibility was incorrect and overly broad in its interpretation of "discretionary function" within the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA). He contended that FAA's failure to detect safety violations during a routine inspection could not be considered as part of their discretionary function, but rather an operational task with set standards and procedures which they failed to follow correctly. Therefore, he believed this should have been grounds for liability under FTCA. Furthermore, he disagreed with the majority’s view that policy considerations were involved in every aspect of FAA’s certification process; instead, he asserted these were limited only to certain stages such as setting minimum safety standards or deciding how many inspections are necessary per year.