Qualified Immunity

Locke v. County of Hubbard, et al.

Submitted by Jane Clayton on Tue, 06/18/2024 - 08:50

In this brief, NPAP urges the Court to reverse the District Court’s grant of qualified immunity to Defendants-Appellees. The District Court’s opinion granting qualified immunity to Defendants- Appellees Aukes and Parks adopted far too restrictive a definition of “clearly established law” and should be reversed.

Rekia Boyd, Angela Helton, and Martinez Sutton v. United States of America

Submitted by Jane Clayton on Mon, 08/14/2023 - 12:48

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.

McKinney v. City of Middletown

Submitted by Re'Neisha Stevenson on Tue, 11/01/2022 - 10:20

In a case where the Second Circuit had already held that a jury could find that prison officers violated the plaintiff’s rights, and the majority on a second appeal gives the defendants qualified immunity, see the dissent by Judge Guido Calabresi, concluding that “this ill-founded, court-made doctrine” should be abolished.