Our primary federal civil rights statute, colloquially called “Section 1983,” says that any state actor who violates someone’s constitutional rights may be sued in federal court. This remedy is crucial not just to secure relief for individuals whose rights are violated, but also to ensure accountability for government agents. Yet the Supreme Court has crippled the functioning of this statute through the judge-made doctrine of “qualified immunity.” This doctrine — at odds with both the text of the statute and the common law principles against which it was passed — immunizes public officials who commit illegal misconduct, unless they violated “clearly established law.” That standard is incredibly difficult for civil rights plaintiffs to overcome, because courts generally require not just a clear legal rule, but a prior case on the books with functionally identical facts.
In Allah v. Milling, 876 F.3d 48 (2d Cir. 2017), the Second Circuit used qualified immunity to shield prison officials who kept an inmate, named Almighty Supreme Born Allah, in dungeon-like, solitary confinement conditions for seven months — all because Mr. Allah had once asked a question about why prison inmates were being denied access to commissary. For this “offense,” Mr. Allah was placed in “Administration Segregation” for over a year, most of which he spent in solitary confinement. He spent 23 hours a day alone in his cell, was handcuffed and shackled anytime he was removed from his cell, and forced to shower in leg irons and wet underwear. To make matters worse, Mr. Allah was, at this time, merely a pretrial detainee who had yet to be convicted of a crime.
Read more at https://www.cato.org/blog/challenging-qualified-immunity-prison-officials-who-kept-man-solitary-no-reason
No comments:
Post a Comment