Comment by themaninthedark
7 hours ago
In the United States, qualified immunity is a legal principle of federal 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".
Under 42 USC § 1983, a plaintiff can sue for damages when state officials violate their constitutional rights or other federal rights.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity
Qualified Immunity only sets the bar or threshold that you have to meet in order to sue.
Nearly impossibly hard to receive justice against government officials due to this standard
The rules and laws allowing the federal government to take over a state case against a federal agent seem much more damaging.
The cops involved in the most recent Minneapolis shooting will almost certainly face no repercussions because of this. The state can bring a case but the feds are clearly uninterested, they would simply take the case into federal court and spike it.
That's not how it works. When a state prosecution of a federal officer is removed to federal court, it's still the state prosecutor who's in charge. The problem is that as long as they were performing their duties they get a lot of leeway. A recent case was a cyclist killed by a DEA agent that ran a stop sign. Case dismissed: federal agents tailing someone don't have to respect state traffic laws.
The state can't bring charges against a federal agent enforcing federal law, otherwise southern states could have sued the federal agents enforcing integration.
https://youtu.be/LuRFcYAO8lI?si=3n5XRqABhotw8Qrw
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But for federal officials, individuals don’t have standing right?
It's more like when the federal government passed a law giving people a recourse for when state officials violate their rights they did not write the law to (or purposefully wrote it to not) include the federal government.