"A student-led coalition has gathered more than 2,600 signatures from law students, legal academics, and law student organizations across 109 law schools calling on Congress to pass the Federal Officer Accountability Act. As the Department of Homeland Security disappears suspected migrants without due process, arbitrarily harasses citizens, and point blank kills innocent people on camera, a shocked public has learned what lawyers have talked about for years: the government has stacked the immunity deck to functionally shield law enforcement from accountability."
"Section 1983 allows individuals to sue state and local officers for constitutional violations since 1871. As appellate attorney Chris Truax put it in The Hill, Section 1983 is "kryptonite for nascent tyranny." That's a tad overstated since Superman doesn't get to avoid kryptonite just by telling a court he was following standard procedure. The judicially contrived defense of "qualified immunity" - the most consequential typo in American law - frustrates most 1983 cases, giving law enforcement a "Get Out of Responsibility Free" card."
A student-led coalition gathered over 2,600 signatures from law students, legal academics, and law student organizations across 109 law schools to press Congress to pass the Federal Officer Accountability Act. The Department of Homeland Security has been accused of disappearing suspected migrants without due process, arbitrarily harassing citizens, and killing innocent people on camera, revealing limits on accountability. Section 1983 has permitted suits against state and local officers since 1871, but the judicially created doctrine of qualified immunity has undermined many claims. The proposed statute would authorize lawsuits against federal officers for constitutional violations and seek to restore accountability.
Read at Above the Law
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