Supreme Court Strikes Down Qualified Immunity Claim - Ep. 7.276

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Channel: Steve Lehto

Views: 259,191

Rating: 4.9525056 out of 5

Keywords: lemon law, michigan lemon law, lemon law attorney, lemon law lawyer, http://www.lehtoslaw.com, steve lehto

Id: dUqjU3UaJus

Length: 13min 50sec (830 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 02 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/DefendCharterRights]

At 0:25, SL: "[T]he U.S. Supreme Court created [qualified immunity] in 1982..."

The U.S. Supreme Court first created qualified immunity in 1967 in Pierson v Ray. Although they didn't call it "qualified immunity," the court ruled that a police officer is excused "from liability for acting under a statute that he reasonably believed to be valid, but that was later held unconstitutional, on its face or as applied."

In 1982 in Harlow v Fitzgerald, the court created the modern criteria for when qualified immunity exists:

We therefore hold that government officials performing discretionary functions, generally are shielded from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.

By 2011, in Ashcroft v al-Kidd, the court had decided that "a reasonable person" should be "every" reasonable person, making it that much easier to grant qualified immunity.

At 0:52, SL incorrectly explains that qualified immunity exists if a government official's "precise" actions had previously been "clearly established" to violate a right. At 1:25, he better describes it as requiring that a clearly established right had to be found in "a case in this jurisdiction on point" rather than identical. I.e., similar rather than precisely the same. It should be noted that the previous case doesn't have to be in the same jurisdiction if there is "a robust ‘consensus of cases of persuasive authority.'" [District of Columbia v Wesby]

At 1:44 (and again at 7:52 and 12:19), SL explains that rights "will never be clearly established" because courts are allowed to rule that a "clearly established" right does not exist before they have to determine if an action violates a right. While it's true most courts opt to go this route, nothing prohibits them from first determining that an action violates a right (and thereby "clearly establishing" that right for future cases). And some courts occasionally have done so. Indeed, in the case SL is discussing, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals made such a ruling.

Only on two occasions, in 2002 and in 2004, had the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a right doesn't necessarily have to be "clearly established" by specifically related prior decision(s). But the court pretty much has ignored these two cases over the past 16 years...until now in Taylor v Riojas. The question is whether the court now goes back to ignoring these three cases.

Here's the ABA Journal column by Edwin Chemerinsky that SL quotes from. It provides a better explanation of what's going on than does SL.