Long title | To amend the Revised Statutes to remove the defense of qualified immunity in the case of any action under section 1979, and for other purposes. |
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Announced in | the 117th United States Congress |
Number of co-sponsors | 39 |
Legislative history | |
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The Ending Qualified Immunity Act is a proposed United States Act of Congress introduced in 2020 by Justin Amash (L-Michigan) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Massachusetts) to end qualified immunity in the United States. [1] [2] [3] Qualified immunity shields police officers and other government officials from being held personally liable for discretionary actions performed within their official capacity (even if those actions violate the civil rights of those affected) unless their actions violate "clearly established" federal law, a precedent requiring both that those actions violate written law and that there be a judicial precedent establishing that such actions are unlawful. [4] [5] [6]
The bill was re-introduced in the 117th Congress by Rep. Pressley in the House of Representatives [7] [8] and by Sen. Edward Markey in the Senate. [7] [9]
The bill was introduced to the House of Representatives on June 2, 2020. In introducing the act, Amash explained:
This week, I am introducing the Ending Qualified Immunity Act to eliminate qualified immunity and restore Americans' ability to obtain relief when police officers violate their constitutionally secured rights. The brutal killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police is merely the latest in a long line of incidents of egregious police misconduct. This pattern continues because police are legally, politically, and culturally insulated from consequences for violating the rights of the people whom they have sworn to serve. That must change so that these incidents of brutality stop happening. [2]
As of August 22,2020 [update] , the Ending Qualified Immunity Act had 66 cosponsors, of whom Representative McClintock is the only Republican. [10] The bill's sponsorship by members of the Libertarian, Republican, and Democratic parties makes it a tripartisan bill. [11]
Qualified immunity is a legal doctrine in United States federal law which shields government officials from being held personally liable for discretionary actions performed within their official capacity, unless their actions violate "clearly established" federal law—even if the victim's civil rights were violated. [12] The U.S. Supreme Court introduced the qualified immunity doctrine in 1967, originally with the rationale of protecting law enforcement officials from frivolous lawsuits and financial liability in cases where they acted in good faith in unclear legal situations. [13] [14] Starting around 2005, courts increasingly[ citation needed ] applied the doctrine to cases involving the use of excessive or deadly force by police, leading to widespread criticism that it, in the words of a 2020 Reuters report, "has become a nearly failsafe tool to let police brutality go unpunished and deny victims their constitutional rights". [15]
Thomas Miller McClintock II is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative for California's 5th congressional district since 2009. His district stretches from the Sacramento suburbs to the outer suburbs of Fresno; it includes Yosemite National Park. A member of the Republican Party, McClintock served as a California state assemblyman from 1982 to 1992 and from 1996 to 2000, when he became a California state senator, a position he held until 2008. He unsuccessfully ran for governor of California in the 2003 recall election and for lieutenant governor of California in the 2006 election.
False arrest, unlawful arrest or wrongful arrest is a common law tort, where a plaintiff alleges they were held in custody without probable cause, or without an order issued by a court of competent jurisdiction. Although it is possible to sue law enforcement officials for false arrest, the usual defendants in such cases are private security firms.
The Enforcement Act of 1871, also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, Third Enforcement Act, Third Ku Klux Klan Act, Civil Rights Act of 1871, or Force Act of 1871, is an Act of the United States Congress that was intended to combat the paramilitary vigilantism of the Ku Klux Klan. The act made certain acts committed by private persons federal offenses including conspiring to deprive citizens of their rights to hold office, serve on juries, or enjoy the equal protection of law. The Act authorized the President to deploy federal troops to counter the Klan and to suspend the writ of habeas corpus to make arrests without charge.
In the United States, qualified immunity is a legal principle of federal constitutional law that grants government officials performing discretionary (optional) functions immunity from lawsuits for damages unless the plaintiff shows that the official violated "clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known". It is comparable to sovereign immunity, though it protects government employees rather than the government itself. It is less strict than absolute immunity, which protects officials who "make reasonable but mistaken judgments about open legal questions", extending to "all [officials] but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law". Qualified immunity applies only to government officials in civil litigation, and does not protect the government itself from suits arising from officials' actions.
Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223 (2009), was a case decided by the United States Supreme Court dealing with the doctrine of qualified immunity.
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Ayanna Soyini Pressley is an American politician who has served as the U.S. representative for Massachusetts's 7th congressional district since 2019. This district includes the northern three quarters of Boston, most of Cambridge, parts of Milton, as well as all of Chelsea, Everett, Randolph, and Somerville. Before serving in the United States House of Representatives, Pressley served as an at-large member of the Boston City Council from 2010 through 2019. She was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 2018 after she defeated the ten-term incumbent Mike Capuano in the Democratic primary election for Massachusetts's 7th congressional district and ran unopposed in the general election. Pressley was the first black woman elected to the Boston City Council and the first black woman elected to Congress from Massachusetts. Pressley is a member of "The Squad", a group of progressive Congress members.
Police brutality is the use of excessive or unnecessary force by personnel affiliated with law enforcement duties when dealing with suspects and civilians.
Justin A. Amash is an American lawyer and politician who served as the U.S. representative for Michigan's 3rd congressional district from 2011 to 2021. He was the second Palestinian-American member of Congress. Originally a Republican, Amash left the GOP and became an independent on July 4, 2019. In April 2020, he joined the Libertarian Party, leaving Congress in January 2021 as the only Libertarian to serve in Congress.
Carlton Wayne Reeves is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi and chair of the United States Sentencing Commission.
The No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act (NOPEC) was a U.S. Congressional bill, never enacted, known as H.R. 2264 (in 2007) and then as part of H.R. 6074 (in 2008). NOPEC was designed to remove the state immunity shield and to allow the international oil cartel, OPEC, and its national oil companies to be sued under U.S. antitrust law for anti-competitive attempts to limit the world's supply of petroleum and the consequent impact on oil prices. Despite popular sentiment against OPEC, legislative proposals to limit the organization's sovereign immunity have so far been unsuccessful. "Varied forms of a NOPEC bill have been introduced some 16 times since 2000, only to be vehemently resisted by the oil industry and its allied oil interests like the American Petroleum Institute and their legion of 'K' Street Lobbyists."
The Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act is a bill in the United States House of Representatives that if passed would prohibit, as an unfair and deceptive act or practice, commercial sexual orientation and gender identity conversion therapy, and for other purposes.
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Plumhoff v. Rickard, 572 U.S. 765 (2014), is a United States Supreme Court case involving the use of force by police officers during high-speed car chases. After first holding that it had jurisdiction to hear the case, the Court held that the conduct of the police officers involved in the case did not violate the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.
Pierson v. Ray, 386 U.S. 547 (1967), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court first introduced the justification for qualified immunity for police officers from being sued for civil rights violations under Section 1983, by arguing that "[a] policeman's lot is not so unhappy that he must choose between being charged with dereliction of duty if he does not arrest when he had probable cause, and being mulcted in damages if he does."
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The increasing frequency of such cases has prompted a growing chorus of criticism from lawyers, legal scholars, civil rights groups, politicians and even judges that qualified immunity, as applied, is unjust. Spanning the political spectrum, this broad coalition says the doctrine has become a nearly failsafe tool to let police brutality go unpunished and deny victims their constitutional rights.