Cato: Openings in the Front in the Campaign Against Qualified Immunity

I’ve blogged several times now about Cato’s ongoing campaign to challenge the doctrine of qualified immunity. This judge-made doctrine – invented out of whole cloth, at odds with the text of Section 1983, and unsupported by the common-law history against which that statute was passed – shields public officials from liability for unlawful misconduct, unless the plaintiff can show that the misconduct violated “clearly established law.” This 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. Not only does this doctrine deny relief to victims whose rights have been violated, but at a structural level, it also erodes accountability for government agents (especially law enforcement).

I’m thrilled to report, however, that in the last 36 hours, we’ve had three promising developments in this front:

First, in a Section 1983 case in the Eastern District of New York, Judge Jack Weinstein denied qualified immunity to police officers alleged to have beaten up a man after he refused to allow them to enter his home without a warrant. His comprehensive opinion not only denied immunity in this case, but also discussed recent criticisms of the doctrine, both on legal and policy grounds, and suggested that the law “must return to a state where some effective remedy is available for serious infringement of constitutional rights.” Judge Weinstein thus joins other lower court judges, like Lynn Adelman of the Eastern District of Wisconsin and Jon O. Newman of the Second Circuit, who have criticized the Supreme Court’s qualified immunity jurisprudence. Lower court judges are, of course, obliged to follow Supreme Court precedent with direct application, but this is exactly the kind of criticism and commentary that can help explain to the Court why that precedent should be reconsidered.

Read more at https://www.cato.org/blog/openings-front-campaign-against-qualified-immunity