The courts continue to give law enforcement the benefit of the doubt in civil courts with them doing their jobs …..The Supreme Court has set a standard in the past that suits against an officer must meet…..
This will not be well received by some right now, who are looking for changes in police policies …
Justice Clarence Thomas issued a six-page dissent, calling on his colleagues to revisit the protections and expressing “strong doubts” about the court’s approach to qualified immunity.
The doctrine, created by the Supreme Court decades ago, allows civil suits only when it can be shown that an official’s actions violated a “clearly established” statutory or constitutional right. When determining whether the right was clearly established, courts consider whether a reasonable official would have known that the actions were a violation.
In practice, the “clearly established” test often means that for their lawsuits to proceed, civil rights plaintiffs must identify a nearly identical violation that has been recognized by the Supreme Court or appellate courts in the same jurisdiction.
Floyd’s death in Minneapolis on May 25 amplified calls for the court — and Congress — to act. Changing qualified immunity is part of the House Democrats’ policing reform legislation, and some senators have called for action as well. President Trump has opposed those efforts.
“The Supreme Court’s deeply disappointing decision today to punt on the critical issue of official immunity, in this time of national reckoning over police violence, places the ball squarely in Congress’s court,” David Cole, national legal director for the ACLU, said in a statement Monday….