The purpose of qualified immunity is to permit officials to carry out their discretionary duties without fear of personal liability or harassing litigation.
It applies to all parts of government. Didn't get the building permit for your kids horse barn? Sue the planning commission members individually. Animal control writes you a citation for Puddles not being on a leash? Unleash the lawyers. Health department gave your wine bar a bad rating? Sue the inspector personally.
The way to fix policing isn't by making the rest of government worse. Reform unions for employees of the people. Create independent civilian oversight boards with the teeth to suspend and terminate. Invest more in mental health and drug rehabilitation services. Invest in educational resources to teach communities how to deal with law enforcement.
Edit to add: People are confusing civil liability with criminal liability. If you are found guilty of a crime, then you can be sued.
> Invest in educational resources to teach communities how to deal with law enforcement.
You have this exactly backwards.
It's telling that instead of mentioning doing away with warrior training, for instance, you list things we, the people, need to do to deal with poorly trained cops with licenses to kill, which, in the case of the police, is exactly what this immunity grants.
The police need better training to handle the people they serve and protect, period. The police need to perform better psychological evaluations of prospective cops. The police need to develop better community relations with the communities they serve.
I agree with reforming the unions and installing more independent civilian oversight. I also agree that the U.S. needs major reform of metal health and drug rehab, but that particular issue is more of a left outer join with the issue being discussed; they overlap unfortunately, but the all-too-often grim outcomes of that overlap are due to the state of policing.
The police and their unions acting in bad faith, and abusing their immunity, is why we're here. WE don't need to clean up our interactions with police. It's the other way around.
Edited: typo, wording, and removed unnecessary emphasis
> The purpose of qualified immunity is to permit officials to carry out their discretionary duties without fear of personal liability or harassing litigation.
This is a general problem with the US court system. People with more resources can use it to destroy people with fewer resources, because litigation is expensive and time consuming even if you ultimately prevail.
This isn't a problem for the rich because they can survive the loss, and then the incentive to frivolously harass them isn't there when it costs you as much as it does them. It isn't a problem for government officials because of qualified immunity. It's a problem for everybody else.
Maybe we should take the exception away from government officials, to increase their incentive to solve it for everybody else.
> The purpose of qualified immunity is to permit officials to carry out their discretionary duties without fear of personal liability or harassing litigation.
Shouldn’t we all be able to carry out our lives without undue fear of personal liability or harassing litigation?
It makes no sense to provide a special civil liberty for government employees and no one else.
If we need to reign in law suits, then let’s do that for everyone.
Qualified immunity was made up by courts, their legislating from the bench should have no merit, and therefore revoking qualified immunity is the right thing to do under checks and balances.
We need a replacement, one written in legislation, that puts fixed narrow limits on how immunity applies. If you break the law - you should receive no protections. There is no excuse for enforcers of law to not know the law. This will put the liability into officers And government workers/representatives hands and force them to respect the law.
You're not including the reasons why qualified immunity is bad though, is this a "devil's advocate" post?
I mean the examples you mentioned would get thrown out by a judge because the examples cited are people doing their jobs.
They're getting rid of qualified immunity because the police is abusing their power to assault and murder people.
I'm not even going to soften that one by saying 'some' police, because inaction is complicity. If one in ten cops are bad, the other nine are complicit for not acting and correcting the one.
> Didn't get the building permit for your kids horse barn? Sue the planning commission members individually. Animal control writes you a citation for Puddles not being on a leash? Unleash the lawyers. Health department gave your wine bar a bad rating? Sue the inspector personally.
That’s exactly the way it should work! If an animal control guy has it in for you and writes you off-leash citations every week while you’re in your own back yard, if the health inspector says he won’t permit black people to stay in business, then you absolutely should be protected by the law. Anything else is plain classism: an implicit assumption that members of a certain class are always in the right, and a requirement to deal with conflict with them not from a position of equal power and rights, but only by hoping to convince them to have mercy.
Certainly getting sued over every little thing would be impracticable, too. But that’s also true for citizens. If the laws that protect us aren’t good enough, then the solution is better laws, not to exempt some classes from the law!
Other countries don't have a problem with officials getting sued. In the UK there doesn't even seem to be a problem with employees getting sued; cases always seem to end up being against the employer. So why does only the US need "qualified immunity"? (That's a real question, not a rhetorical one.)
> The purpose of qualified immunity is to permit officials to carry out their discretionary duties without fear of personal liability or harassing litigation.
> It applies to all parts of government. Didn't get the building permit for your kids horse barn? Sue the planning commission members individually. Animal control writes you a citation for Puddles not being on a leash? Unleash the lawyers. Health department gave your wine bar a bad rating? Sue the inspector personally.
In Germany, police officers (and other government officials) only have personal liability if they intentionally act against the law or are grossly negligent in following their duties. The scenarios you describe would lead to all these lawsuits being thrown out in court as frivolous.
The correct way to appeal against executive decisions (the denial of building permit, the citation for your unleashed poodle or the bad health rating for the bar) is to file a suit at an administrative court ("Verwaltungsgericht"). Plead your case there and the court can override the executive decision.
You say "sue the inspector" like it's obviously a bad thing. If the inspector used their special government appointed powers to intentionally or negligently screw you over, they should be sued. Prohibiting individuals from being sued created two perverse incentives:
1. It emboldens those who do harm and allows that kind of behavior to become systemic (as it has in police culture)
2. It removes an incentive to improve our court systems and legal processes, because those closest to those legal systems have generally been immune.
> If you are found guilty of a crime, then you can be sued.
?? Generally, people want justice to be served. If a police officer had already been found guilty, they've already been given a sentence. That rarely happens because police departments and their unions stonewall efforts to determine truth and charge appropriately.
And then they will need to buy private liability insurance, and bad cops will get their rates hiked until they can't afford to keep being cops, instead of just getting transferred to a new district to offend again.
makes a lot of sense to me. if you sue someone for "bad ratings" as you mentioned, you likely have no case and incur court expanses, including penalty for wasting time... but at least you have that option for when you really have a case.
Qualified immunity for police officers includes immunity from criminal prosecution and is extremely different from the civil liability you are talking about.
Isn't qualified immunity applies only to police?
If not, then the solution should be to end qualified immunity for police only.
There is a difference between health department inspector and police officer, no reason to apply the same standards in both cases.
I understand the arguments that "QI has reasonable goals in theory", but it is time to throw the baby out with the bathwater. If cops didn't want to lose QI, they should have held themselves to account for the last few decades. Maybe the unions should have spoken up when cops steal tens of thousands of dollars in cash from a suspect, and get away with it due to QI.
San Antonio, TX will be voting in May on whether to disband the police union. "Back the Blue" types are saying it's Defund in disguise, that we won't be able to find good cops, and so on.
Except several large cities in Texas don't have unionized police, and they do alright. Furthermore, the cops in San Antonio can commit really awful crimes, and still have months- or years-long appeals.
Being a cop isn't a right, it is a privilege and a critical duty. It should be easy to fire bad cops. SAPD, if you didn't want your union to be busted, maybe you should have held yourselves to a higher standard.
From the outside, the US has big issues with race, poverty, mental health and access to firearms. That makes policing very difficult and pushes towards a "shoot first" approach.
But since the US refuses to address any of the issues, it's stuck trying to fix the problem without being able to fix the problem.
What concerns me most (and I see it here in the UK too) isn't these issues themselves, it is the inability of people (media, politicians and everyday citizens) to have an adult conversation about any of it. If the US collectively said "we accept these events as a downside of our way of life" I might not agree but I'd understand. Instead people act like they're surprised or pretend they can be fixed by tinkering around the edges. It seems quite dishonest...
Since it's a USA-specific term and not very self-explanatory (I thought this was a COVID-related thing because it contains 'immunity', but it's not):
> In the United States, qualified immunity is a legal principle that grants government officials performing discretionary functions immunity from civil suits unless the plaintiff shows that the official violated "clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known".
I think that the Game theory suggests that cops will be less inclined to show up to a call or do anything to fight crime, because it could bring too much legal responsibility.
Eat donuts, ignore the radio and you will be fine.
Forget qualified immunity and civil liability.
Why are police not being held criminally responsible for criminal acts? I am far more concerned about that.
I thought that because QI was defended by the SCOTUS, that even if a state doesn't have QI at all, a police officer or department sued for malpractice could still appeal to the SCOTUS and then eventually win?
It's more complicated at the federal level, but in this case the bill abolishes qualified immunity when suing New Mexico officials in New Mexico courts for violations of New Mexico law. Presumably New Mexico courts adopted the federal concept of qualified immunity at some point. See https://www.nmlegis.gov/Sessions/21%20Regular/bills/house/HB...
You usually sue state officials under Federal law when a state doesn't permit residents to sue them atall, or if the claims, defenses, or remedies are too strict. A Civil War Reconstruction-era Federal statue, the Ku Klux Klan Act (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan_Act), enacted under the newly granted powers of the 14th Amendment, permitted people to sue state officials whence previously they were barred by state sovereign immunity. The act was rarely used for the first 80 or so years; why I don't know. Qualified immunity is something SCOTUS cooked up after a rapid increase in such law suits caused some judicial anxiety about the potential chilling effect of supposedly frivolous law suits. To be fair, this was at a time when a rather liberal Supreme Court was effectively inventing new rights, like so-called Miranda rights, right to appointed counsel when indigent, etc, the scope of which were then unclear.
I never realized that we referred to citizens of New Mexico as New Mexicans. It makes sense, I don't know what else you'd call them, but it was confusing to see that for the first time.
> recover damages from the government when their constitutional rights are violated
Great, so I'm paying for the sins of crappy cops via my taxes. Do I have an ability to influence my city or state to not hire unethical cops? (serious question)
What (if at all) does this mean about the immunity of federal officials working in New Mexico? Do the same rules apply, or is there still QI for them as they’re not state officials?
IMHO, the US is heading down a dangerous path as regards things like this. One case I'm really looking at is this one that will be decided by SCOTUS by June 2021:
Just want to highlight this part of the bill since it seems that it was missed by many commenters.
> INDEMNIFICATION BY PUBLIC BODY.--A judgment awarded pursuant to the New Mexico Civil Rights Act against a person acting on behalf of, under color of or within the course and scope of the authority of the public body shall be paid by the public body.
A frivolous lawsuit can still be dismissed without qualified immunity, and they regularly are, but the problem is that serious wrongdoing is also regularly dismissed, creating a catch 22 where the lack of existing case law and the requirement that wrongdoing be in violation of clearly established law (which generally means nearly identical facts) leads to cases being dismissed before they become case law.
That's not conducive to good governance, which is why you get conservative Libertarians like The Cato Institute joining with the NAACP to argue against it.
> “Qualified immunity is a court-created doctrine that allows public officials to escape accountability after they engage in misconduct, even when their actions send an innocent person to prison.
I know this is likely impossible.. but I'd love to see prosecutors/law enforcement have to serve out the sentence or someone they convicted via misconduct. Withhold or manufacture evidence to push for a 10 year sentence? Sure but if that's ever uncovered, you get the 10 year sentence instead.
It might convince everyone to be a) more forthcoming with evidence and b) reasonable in the penalties they seek. Both could be a win for the system and the public as a whole.
With this, police will soon stop intervening to stop crimes from happening, and will instead focus their attention on after-the-fact data gathering and reporting. I can't blame them, but quality of life for law abiding citizens is likely to suffer. In high crime areas, I can understand police considering certain neighborhoods as "no go" zones. Why take such a risk with your own life to stop a crime against somebody else?
I don't know why anyone would want to be a police officer. There's no upside.
Aside from the genuine affection they get from the people they help here and there.
Given the nature of their job, it seems like there would be too much personal risk to get involved in any kind of physical altercation with the public. Because if you get in a fight, I mean a real fight, you better be ready to fight-to-win. Because there's a good chance that the meth'd out junkie you're fighting doesn't even know what planet he's on, let alone what are the consequences of pulling your gun off your hip and shooting you with it.
[+] [-] mike_d|5 years ago|reply
It applies to all parts of government. Didn't get the building permit for your kids horse barn? Sue the planning commission members individually. Animal control writes you a citation for Puddles not being on a leash? Unleash the lawyers. Health department gave your wine bar a bad rating? Sue the inspector personally.
The way to fix policing isn't by making the rest of government worse. Reform unions for employees of the people. Create independent civilian oversight boards with the teeth to suspend and terminate. Invest more in mental health and drug rehabilitation services. Invest in educational resources to teach communities how to deal with law enforcement.
Edit to add: People are confusing civil liability with criminal liability. If you are found guilty of a crime, then you can be sued.
[+] [-] scrozart|5 years ago|reply
You have this exactly backwards.
It's telling that instead of mentioning doing away with warrior training, for instance, you list things we, the people, need to do to deal with poorly trained cops with licenses to kill, which, in the case of the police, is exactly what this immunity grants.
The police need better training to handle the people they serve and protect, period. The police need to perform better psychological evaluations of prospective cops. The police need to develop better community relations with the communities they serve.
I agree with reforming the unions and installing more independent civilian oversight. I also agree that the U.S. needs major reform of metal health and drug rehab, but that particular issue is more of a left outer join with the issue being discussed; they overlap unfortunately, but the all-too-often grim outcomes of that overlap are due to the state of policing.
The police and their unions acting in bad faith, and abusing their immunity, is why we're here. WE don't need to clean up our interactions with police. It's the other way around.
Edited: typo, wording, and removed unnecessary emphasis
[+] [-] AnthonyMouse|5 years ago|reply
This is a general problem with the US court system. People with more resources can use it to destroy people with fewer resources, because litigation is expensive and time consuming even if you ultimately prevail.
This isn't a problem for the rich because they can survive the loss, and then the incentive to frivolously harass them isn't there when it costs you as much as it does them. It isn't a problem for government officials because of qualified immunity. It's a problem for everybody else.
Maybe we should take the exception away from government officials, to increase their incentive to solve it for everybody else.
[+] [-] jmull|5 years ago|reply
Shouldn’t we all be able to carry out our lives without undue fear of personal liability or harassing litigation?
It makes no sense to provide a special civil liberty for government employees and no one else.
If we need to reign in law suits, then let’s do that for everyone.
[+] [-] devwastaken|5 years ago|reply
We need a replacement, one written in legislation, that puts fixed narrow limits on how immunity applies. If you break the law - you should receive no protections. There is no excuse for enforcers of law to not know the law. This will put the liability into officers And government workers/representatives hands and force them to respect the law.
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|5 years ago|reply
I mean the examples you mentioned would get thrown out by a judge because the examples cited are people doing their jobs.
They're getting rid of qualified immunity because the police is abusing their power to assault and murder people.
I'm not even going to soften that one by saying 'some' police, because inaction is complicity. If one in ten cops are bad, the other nine are complicit for not acting and correcting the one.
[+] [-] twhb|5 years ago|reply
That’s exactly the way it should work! If an animal control guy has it in for you and writes you off-leash citations every week while you’re in your own back yard, if the health inspector says he won’t permit black people to stay in business, then you absolutely should be protected by the law. Anything else is plain classism: an implicit assumption that members of a certain class are always in the right, and a requirement to deal with conflict with them not from a position of equal power and rights, but only by hoping to convince them to have mercy.
Certainly getting sued over every little thing would be impracticable, too. But that’s also true for citizens. If the laws that protect us aren’t good enough, then the solution is better laws, not to exempt some classes from the law!
[+] [-] bloak|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mschuster91|5 years ago|reply
> It applies to all parts of government. Didn't get the building permit for your kids horse barn? Sue the planning commission members individually. Animal control writes you a citation for Puddles not being on a leash? Unleash the lawyers. Health department gave your wine bar a bad rating? Sue the inspector personally.
In Germany, police officers (and other government officials) only have personal liability if they intentionally act against the law or are grossly negligent in following their duties. The scenarios you describe would lead to all these lawsuits being thrown out in court as frivolous.
The correct way to appeal against executive decisions (the denial of building permit, the citation for your unleashed poodle or the bad health rating for the bar) is to file a suit at an administrative court ("Verwaltungsgericht"). Plead your case there and the court can override the executive decision.
[+] [-] tomc1985|5 years ago|reply
I am definitely not a lawyer or even good at "law" but that would just be insane if the truth is otherwise
[+] [-] barnaclejive|5 years ago|reply
You see no issue with that, seriously?
[+] [-] billytetrud|5 years ago|reply
1. It emboldens those who do harm and allows that kind of behavior to become systemic (as it has in police culture) 2. It removes an incentive to improve our court systems and legal processes, because those closest to those legal systems have generally been immune.
> If you are found guilty of a crime, then you can be sued.
?? Generally, people want justice to be served. If a police officer had already been found guilty, they've already been given a sentence. That rarely happens because police departments and their unions stonewall efforts to determine truth and charge appropriately.
[+] [-] TaylorAlexander|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AlexTWithBeard|5 years ago|reply
In case of their gross misconduct - sure.
This is the same situation we have with non-government employees right now. Would you sue a club bouncer because he denied you entry? I guess no.
[+] [-] jshen|5 years ago|reply
https://abc7.com/lawsuit-virginia-police-threaten-pepper-spr...
[+] [-] high_byte|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ric2b|5 years ago|reply
Make all employees have qualified immunity, can't be sued for things you did while working, what could go wrong?
[+] [-] freen|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] kstenerud|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] wolfretcrap|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adamsvystun|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chmod775|5 years ago|reply
They don't for obvious reasons. If people need protection from certain laws, then write that in the specific laws.
[+] [-] MomoXenosaga|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jshen|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] enraged_camel|5 years ago|reply
No, you are talking about something else, which is called sovereign immunity.
Qualified immunity is a dumb concept the courts made up to protect police officers.
[+] [-] unethical_ban|5 years ago|reply
San Antonio, TX will be voting in May on whether to disband the police union. "Back the Blue" types are saying it's Defund in disguise, that we won't be able to find good cops, and so on.
Except several large cities in Texas don't have unionized police, and they do alright. Furthermore, the cops in San Antonio can commit really awful crimes, and still have months- or years-long appeals.
Being a cop isn't a right, it is a privilege and a critical duty. It should be easy to fire bad cops. SAPD, if you didn't want your union to be busted, maybe you should have held yourselves to a higher standard.
[+] [-] tinus_hn|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] magwa101|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] gamblor956|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LatteLazy|5 years ago|reply
But since the US refuses to address any of the issues, it's stuck trying to fix the problem without being able to fix the problem.
What concerns me most (and I see it here in the UK too) isn't these issues themselves, it is the inability of people (media, politicians and everyday citizens) to have an adult conversation about any of it. If the US collectively said "we accept these events as a downside of our way of life" I might not agree but I'd understand. Instead people act like they're surprised or pretend they can be fixed by tinkering around the edges. It seems quite dishonest...
[+] [-] lucb1e|5 years ago|reply
> In the United States, qualified immunity is a legal principle that grants government officials performing discretionary functions immunity from civil suits unless the plaintiff shows that the official violated "clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known".
-- Wikipedia
[+] [-] coolspot|5 years ago|reply
Eat donuts, ignore the radio and you will be fine.
[+] [-] SyzygistSix|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] geogra4|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DaiPlusPlus|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wahern|5 years ago|reply
You usually sue state officials under Federal law when a state doesn't permit residents to sue them at all, or if the claims, defenses, or remedies are too strict. A Civil War Reconstruction-era Federal statue, the Ku Klux Klan Act (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan_Act), enacted under the newly granted powers of the 14th Amendment, permitted people to sue state officials whence previously they were barred by state sovereign immunity. The act was rarely used for the first 80 or so years; why I don't know. Qualified immunity is something SCOTUS cooked up after a rapid increase in such law suits caused some judicial anxiety about the potential chilling effect of supposedly frivolous law suits. To be fair, this was at a time when a rather liberal Supreme Court was effectively inventing new rights, like so-called Miranda rights, right to appointed counsel when indigent, etc, the scope of which were then unclear.
[+] [-] Igelau|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ashneo76|5 years ago|reply
It is a risky job and it should valued as such. It should be selective too.
We have bodycams, to reduce the chances of "he said, she said"
[+] [-] CA0DA|5 years ago|reply
Great, so I'm paying for the sins of crappy cops via my taxes. Do I have an ability to influence my city or state to not hire unethical cops? (serious question)
[+] [-] noodlesUK|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] totalminimalist|5 years ago|reply
https://www.jurist.org/news/2021/03/us-supreme-court-hears-a...
[+] [-] exabrial|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] voxic11|5 years ago|reply
> INDEMNIFICATION BY PUBLIC BODY.--A judgment awarded pursuant to the New Mexico Civil Rights Act against a person acting on behalf of, under color of or within the course and scope of the authority of the public body shall be paid by the public body.
[+] [-] lsiebert|5 years ago|reply
That's not conducive to good governance, which is why you get conservative Libertarians like The Cato Institute joining with the NAACP to argue against it.
[+] [-] caseysoftware|5 years ago|reply
I know this is likely impossible.. but I'd love to see prosecutors/law enforcement have to serve out the sentence or someone they convicted via misconduct. Withhold or manufacture evidence to push for a 10 year sentence? Sure but if that's ever uncovered, you get the 10 year sentence instead.
It might convince everyone to be a) more forthcoming with evidence and b) reasonable in the penalties they seek. Both could be a win for the system and the public as a whole.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] eplanit|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VWWHFSfQ|5 years ago|reply
Aside from the genuine affection they get from the people they help here and there.
Given the nature of their job, it seems like there would be too much personal risk to get involved in any kind of physical altercation with the public. Because if you get in a fight, I mean a real fight, you better be ready to fight-to-win. Because there's a good chance that the meth'd out junkie you're fighting doesn't even know what planet he's on, let alone what are the consequences of pulling your gun off your hip and shooting you with it.