Eric André and Clayton English allege that Clayton County police racially profiled and illegally stopped them at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, describing the encounter as humiliating and dehumanizing. A federal district court dismissed their 2022 lawsuit in 2023, citing failure to plausibly allege constitutional violations and granting immunity to defendants including Clayton County and the police chief. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that dismissal, finding the plaintiffs plausibly alleged that Clayton County subjected them to unreasonable searches and seizures and remanding the case after careful review. The appeals ruling leaves qualified immunity intact for individual officers while preserving a path to challenge biased "consensual encounters" that disproportionately target Black passengers.
You know that part where you get off a plane and a couple of officers immediately ask you which drugs you're trafficking? No? Eric André does, and has since felt a moral calling to do what he can to fight the "consensual encounter" in an Atlanta airport that felt a lot more like racial profiling. You can listen to his own account of the encounter below:
A federal appeals court decided to reverse the dismissal of a lawsuit comedians Eric André and Clayton English filed in 2022 claiming their Fourth Amendment rights were violated....The district court dismissed their lawsuit in 2023, citing the plaintiffs' "failure to plausibly allege any constitutional violations," and all defendants, including Clayton County and the police department's chief, were protected by immunity. But the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in its opinion that it found that André and English "plausibly alleged that Clayton County subjected them to unreasonable searches and seizures" and reversed the dismissal "after careful review."
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