Petitioners are seeking an adjustment to the current standards federal courts use to assess civil claims for civil rights violations. Under Section 1983, courts analyze excessive force claims arising out of arrests, stops, and other seizures of individuals at liberty under the Fourth Amendment.
Petitioners are seeking to amend Section 1983 to eliminate qualified immunity as a defense and make the Fourth Amendment’s objective reasonableness standard less burdensome. Currently, in cases where an officer claims they used force because an individual was holding a weapon, the plaintiff has to prove that a reasonable officer could not have concluded that the weapon posed a risk. Unfortunately, courts often allow officers to justify deadly shootings on the basis of hypothetical possibilities even when there is no supporting evidence.