Posted on 10/19/2021 9:31:09 AM PDT by UMCRevMom@aol.com
The U.S. Supreme Court has delivered two major rulings that are favorable to police officers.
The nation’s highest court overruled two decisions and handed law enforcement big wins in a pair of cases over qualified immunity.
Republicans overwhelmingly support qualified immunity, arguing that if it was taken away officers would be subject to lawsuits for nearly every difficult call they are faced with on the job. This would make it nearly impossible to recruit or retain good officers, they say.
The justices reversed two federal appeals courts that allowed excessive force lawsuits to proceed against officers in separate cases in California and Oklahoma.
Both rulings were decided without oral arguments and with no public dissent among the justices.
“As we have explained, qualified immunity protects ‘all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law,’” the justices wrote.
The Court summarized the two cases:
City of Tahlequah v. Bond (20-1668) (Per Curiam) Officers Girdner and Vick are entitled to qualified immunity in this excessive force action brought under 42 U. S. C. §1983; the Tenth Circuit’s contrary holding is not based on a single precedent finding a Fourth Amendment violation under similar circumstances.
Rivas-Villegas v. Cortesluna (20-1539) (Per Curiam) Officer Rivas-Villegas is entitled to qualified immunity in this excessive force action brought under 42 U. S. C. §1983; the Ninth Circuit’s holding that Circuit precedent “put him on notice that his conduct constituted excessive force” is reversed.
The court wrote:
“The other decisions relied upon by the Court of Appeals are even less relevant. As for Sevier, that decision merely noted in dicta that deliberate or reckless pre-seizure conduct can render a later use of force excessive before dismissing the appeal for lack of jurisdiction.
To state the obvious, a decision where the court did not even have jurisdiction cannot clearly establish substantive constitutional law.
“Regardless, that formulation of the rule is much too general to bear on whether the officers’ particular conduct here violated the Fourth Amendment.
“Suffice it to say, a reasonable officer could miss the connection between that case and this one. Neither the panel majority nor the respondent have identified a single precedent finding a Fourth Amendment violation under similar circumstances,” the court wrote.
The officers were thus entitled to qualified immunity. The petition for certiorari and the motions for leave to file briefs amici curiae are granted, and the judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed,” the court added.
In two cases, SCOTUS shields police officers by permitting them to use the qualified immunity doctrine to terminate proceedings against them. https://t.co/nPXcXwjgan — Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) October 18, 2021
SCOTUS granted requests by police officers in separate cases from California and Oklahoma for legal protection under a doctrine called "qualified immunity" from lawsuits accusing them of using excessive force https://t.co/3zuSaPRm36 — Reuters Legal (@ReutersLegal) October 18, 2021
The NAACP was not happy about the ruling.
“These are not the actions of a Court that is likely to end or seriously reform qualified immunity. Reform is going to have to come from elsewhere,” Chris Kemmitt, deputy director of litigation for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, tweeted.
Other liberals were not happy about the pair of rulings:
This language is going to create huge problems for victims of police brutality. We're back to a nearly insurmountable version of qualified immunity that requires perfectly on-point precedent—which almost never exists. Bad day for qualified immunity reform. https://t.co/VJALozETCl pic.twitter.com/pc9vtfoi8m — Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) October 18, 2021
The #SCOTUS rulings today on qualified immunity are so deeply disappointing for so many reasons, including that there is simply NO basis for qualified immunity in the text & history of the federal law individuals use to sue when they've been the victims of police brutality. 1/x https://t.co/gO41JjtCsp — Brianne Gorod (@BrianneGorod) October 18, 2021
By shielding police officers from accountability, qualified immunity encourages more police violence against Black and Brown people. The Supreme Court remains unwilling to correct this injustice. Congress needs to pass my legislation to finally abolish qualified immunity. https://t.co/a0ePZrewjo — Ed Markey (@SenMarkey) October 18, 2021
We need to fix this and a fix is ready-to-hand: apply traditional, well-known doctrine of ‘respondeat superior’ to police departments, like most every other employer. https://t.co/NR7Zn2acOV — Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) October 18, 2021
That is the exception that proves the rule. The district court originally held that the officers DID have qualified immunity, even with the egregious offenses committed by the officers.
True dat...
“So the standard is “as long as it’s not criminal”?”
Actually it’s even worse than that. The standard is that it must not be knowingly and intentionally criminal. The cops can act criminally, but unless you can prove they knowingly and intentionally were violating the law, they still retain their immunity.
So “ignorance of the law” actually is an excuse, but only if you are a cop, apparently.
“So a case with the same set of facts in the 5th Circuit that overcame qualified immunity would not do so in any other Circuit.”
When conflicting decisions like this occur in the lower courts, it is the job of SCOTUS to take a case and render a decision that brings ALL conflicting decisions in the lower courts under a unified ruling. Thus, further decisions by the lower courts should be able to render a ruling consistent with the SCOTUS ruling.
The war on police is brain dead.
Tell that to the people of Portland and other left-wing cities where the police officers' hand are tied and violent crime and murder is soaring.
Hey Portland and all other liberal cities, no QI needed in a free society.
FYI- LE is primarily tasked/focused on “continuity of governance” not public safety.
Cops are like umpires or referees; half the people think they’re going too far and the other half think they’re not going far enough.
The lawsuits would come from both sides, something most people probably don’t realize. As it stands, there’s very little reason for anyone to become a police officer, and this (killing qualified immunity) would put the final nail on the coffin.
“Cops are like umpires or referees”
We wish. It seems with QI, cops are like judges and juries. No QI for anyone but heroic doctors.
I am not talking about police specifically, I’m talking about government in general. Those parasites gave blanket immunity to Big Pharma and the two feral beasts have partnered up to turned us all into lab rats for beta testing their mRNA poison.
You keep loving on the establishment because I am certain they love you back LOL.
The problem is that in the majority of cases, no decision is ever rendered on the facts of the case, because the case is dismissed on the basis of qualified immunity, so it never gets to a level where SCOTUS will even hear it. That is the main problem - the cases get dismissed because there is no applicable precedent, and no precedent ever gets established because the cases get dismissed (because there is no precedent...)
Just wait when federal cops take over much of the local policing. They’ll be armed political operatives for the elites. A lot of people here will change their minds if that happens.
Those interested in reading the actual rulings themselves rather than depend upon media reporting, can find these here:
City of Tahlequah v. Bond
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-1668_19m2.pdf
Rivas-Villegas v. Cortesluna
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-1539_09m1.pdf
LE need QI or Feds will shove a standing army at us?
And the Supreme Court made clear that isn’t the law.
You (and the media trash pushing this narrative) seem to conflate QI with the absolute immunity that judges and prosecutors get.
The statistics show otherwise. In 2017 A UCLA professor reviewed how often cases are tossed for QI
“The cases included 131 from the Southern District of Texas, 225 from the Middle District of Florida, 172 from the Northern District of Ohio, 248 from the Northern District of California and 407 from the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Qualified immunity could have been raised in 979 of those cases, Schwartz found. And just 3.9% of those cases were dismissed based on qualified immunity. Of all the 1,183 cases Schwartz studied, 0.6% were dismissed at the motion-to-dismiss stage — usually an early stage in civil litigation — and 2.6% were dismissed at summary judgment.”
# The immunity is qualified, not absolute.
LOL. Really? It might as well be absolute. Reading between the lines on these two decisions, it would appear that basically the circumstances have to be almost identical to another published and widely known case in order for this ‘qualified’ immunity to be overcome.
Some animals are indeed more equal than others.
# Tell that to the people of Portland and other left-wing cities where the police officers’ hand are tied and violent crime and murder is soaring.
If they didn’t also aggressively arrest (via the cops), and prosecute lowly citizen who actually has the nerve to defend his life, liberty, or property the situation would resolve itself soon enough.
The Feds want to take over local police. Having QI furthers their goals. They’ll try to do it piecemeal.
Government is a fearful master.
Thank you.
Always better to read primary sources when available. This is a general rule for history and other fields as well.
Summaries and articles can introduce agendas and bias. At one time, doing this was actually considered poor journalism and/or scholastic practice. In today’s superheated “woke” environment, failing to advocate the “correct” point of view is fatal to one’s career, no matter how distinguished the person.
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