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
Read through the summaries in both cases. Thanks again for posting.
Recommend other persons read the case summaries (provided at post #34) before posting comments.
These cases were decided on facts specific to the cases: one involvied the fatal shooting of a hammer yielding suspect; the other involved an officer kneeling on the left side of a violent arrestee for eight whole seconds while disarming him.
Was hoping for natural immunity instead of the vax demand.
The opinions in these cases support qualified immunity; however, the notion that there has to be an exact similar fact pattern to overcome qualified immunity is nonsense.
The standard in the past was the cops knew or should have known their actions were in violation of a person’s constitutional rights.
These two cases are much-ado-about-nothing.
It also bodes well for Derek Chauvin’s appeals.
Law and order, Giuliani style, is necessary for any kind of quality of life. Democrat-run cities have become violent hellholes without it.
That is different subject. We've never given Big Pharma that kind of blanket immunity in the past and it was a mistake to grant in regard to Covid vaccines.
# Stop lumping all or most police officers with the worst ones.
No, I don’t think I will.
# Always better to read primary sources when available. This is a general rule for history and other fields as well.
Absolutely. I read through most of them, and the oral arguments when they come up as well. I’ve seen absolute lies about both in the media reporting. The media simply cannot be trusted.
Drs. Christopher Duntsch, Jack Kevorkian.
Yes, the combination of the words “media” and “trustworthiness” has become mostly an oxymoron these days. And they did it all to themselves by selling their souls to activist/viewpoint journalism (aka “woke”).
Watching CSPAN was the great eye opener for me. I would watch an event (usually a speech, interview, conference, etc.) then view a media account of the same event later. It was like there had been two separate events; the one I watched and the one the media reported on. The “spin” was very obvious.
It brings to mind Goebbels and his claim that, if you are going to lie, make it a big lie and his holding that a lie repeated often enough and loudly enough becomes the truth.
Unfortunately, media on the right is just as likely to spin things as on the left. Perhaps it is defensive. But there is no honor in doing it.
During the Vietnam War, there was a self-condemning saying that circulated:
“We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”
Paraphrasing, will it be said:
“We had to destroy honor in order to save it.”
and
“We had to destroy the media in order to save it.”
Beyond not being a “good look,” can a democratic, free society sustain itself when so much purposeful lying and exaggeration is going on? This is the point when dictators and strong men arise.
Go join BLM and the defund the police movement. But, make sure you move to one of the cities that supports that kind of thing.
You got me, no QI for anyone.
I’ll be with you as long as we can include all judges; state, local and federal.
Supreme Court is once again protecting union-backed government thugs - if they grant qualified immunity in a given case because the thuggery wasn’t yet established as a Constitutional violation by a Supreme Court ruling, they should actually rule on the fact pattern to say whether it is a violation or not. Right now, the Supreme Court punts on these facts patterns and the thugs can keep thugging thanks to Supreme Court laziness and indifference.
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