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
Government granted immunity to abusive bureaucrats is tyrannical.
There are plenty of conservatives who don’t support qualified immunity and the many abuses it permits.
So you think cops should be hesitant to do their jobs for fear of being sued? The immunity is qualified, not absolute.
I don’t know how huge a win it is. Qualified immunity has been established case law for some time. Unless the officer in question knowingly violated the law in the course of their actions then they’re protected from civil suits.
Like when a guy arms himself with a hammer and threatens others (including the officers) with it?
Yes, surely the family should be able to sue the officers after they shoot that guy. After all, it was just a hammer. Captain America doesn’t need a gun to take a hammer off someone.
/s
The fault is with Congress: the have the power to specify what the limits of conduct are in terms of civil rights. They’re just too lazy and too cowardly to rein in courts that invented the doctrine.
“Qualified immunity has been established case law for some time.”
Not according to the 9th and 10 circuit courts.
Qualified immunity is not what it sounds like.
It does not keep officers from being charged with crimes.
It does not automatically keep officers from being held personally civilly liable for civil rights violations.
In federal civil rights lawsuits the federal judge has to authorize the municipality/state govt entities granting of indemnity (we the City will pay all damages found by a jury)
The lefties want to get rid of it because they have an army of attorneys who will sur sue sue the cops who make arrests.
If you are subject to a lawsuit good luck getting a home loan or refinanced.
The problem with qualified immunity as it is currently applied is that it is almost impossible to overcome. It doesn't matter how egregious the offense, the officer will have immunity unless there is a specific case in that particular judicial circuit, with the same exact set of particular facts, that has previously held that the actions were unlawful. It becomes a Catch-22: because there is no previous case law, the case gets thrown out - which means no case law can ever be created to establish that the conduct is illegal. Even if the conduct were established as illegal in another judicial circuit, that would not be enough to overcome qualified immunity. 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.
The Circuit Courts ruled that qualified immunity wasn't allowed because the officers in question committed crimes or violated the victim's rights in the course of their actions. The Supreme Court ruled that the actions in question were not criminal so qualified immunity protections remained.
I like cautious LE. Winging it with no regard for damage done has cost society a ton of lives/money. No QI needed in a free society.
The only defense is to take matters into your own hands and defend yourself when the cop goes into “criminal” mode.
e.g. civil asset forfeiture must be nipped in the bud during the stop. “I shot the cop because he was robbing me.”
The Supreme Court ruled that the actions in question were not criminal so qualified immunity protections remained.
***So the standard is “as long as it’s not criminal”? That’s a recipe for tyranny.
That is correct!
The Court is to decide if existing law/ruling is Constitutional.
Not to “write laws” from the bench.
This is why Congress loves that COVID is being run by Executive Mandate as it means NONE of them has their fingerprints on it.
They are safe from retribution if things go bad.
I’ve been advocating for the abolition of qualified immunity on this site for over a decade.
“So you think cops should be hesitant to do their jobs for fear of being sued?”
Cops provide no service to most conservatives, and in fact are an impediment to enforcement of law.
Abolish qualified immunity.
It sounds like you know more about this issue than I do. Thanks for the explanation.
That’s incorrect.
There was no case directly on point here either:
https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/taylor-riojas.pdf
Overcoming Qualified immunity doesn’t always require a case directly on point.
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