CREATORS
April 27, 2026
Recently,
the U.S. Supreme Court reversed a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
2nd Circuit that permitted a civil rights suit to move forward against a
Vermont police officer who allegedly used excessive force against a woman
during a 2015 demonstration at the governor's inauguration.
Detective
Jacob Zorn was sued by Shela Linton. The Vermont Capitol was closed for the
inauguration. Protesters showed up anyway and were told by police that they had
to leave or they would be arrested for trespassing. The protesters were unfazed
and the police moved in.
Zorn asked
Linton to stand up. According to the U.S. Supreme Court opinion, Zorn took
Linton's arm, put it behind her back, placed pressure on her wrist and lifted
her to her feet. Linton sued Zorn for using excessive force under the federal
civil rights statute — Title 42 of the U.S. Code 1983 — alleging a state actor
violated her constitutional rights.
Section
1983 grew out of the Civil Rights Acts of 1871. The Act was passed after the
Civil War to prevent public officials and the Ku Klux Klan from violating the
constitutional rights of former slaves.
Section
1983 provided relief — in the form of money damages — to claimants whose
constitutional rights had been violated by a police officer or public official
acting under state authority. The Act provides that a wrongdoer "shall be
liable to the party injured in an action at law."
About 100
years after the Civil Rights Act, the Supreme Court established qualified
immunity, a potential defense to wrongdoers. About a decade later, the high
Court further refined qualified immunity. The Court ruled a state actor would
be immune from liability if, at the time of the harm, the conduct "was not
clearly established" as a civil rights violation. The Court continued,
"An official could not reasonably be expected to anticipate subsequent
legal developments, nor could he fairly be said to 'know' that the law forbade
conduct not previously identified as unlawful."
The 2nd
Circuit Court reasoned that its 2004 decision in a case involving the arrest of
anti-abortion protesters at a women's health center in Connecticut
"clearly establish(ed)" that the tactics that Zorn had used in
arresting Linton, "such as a rear-wristlock on a protestor who is
passively resisting arrest constitutes excessive force and is therefore
violative of that arrestee's Fourth Amendment rights." Therefore, the
court of appeals concluded that law enforcement officials like Zorn would have
been on notice that they could be held personally liable for such conduct.
The U.S.
Supreme Court disagreed. The high court held, according to SCOTUSblog, that
government officials are entitled to qualified immunity "unless they could
have 'read' the relevant" cases governing their behavior before acting
"and 'know(n)' that it proscribed their specific conduct." The Court
found that the 2004 case on which the court of appeals relied "did not
clearly establish that Zorn's specific conduct violated the Fourth
Amendment."
The
Supreme Court has yet again made it more difficult to establish qualified
immunity, providing further protection to police officers who harm individuals
by violating their constitutional rights. The standard of "clearly
established" unlawful conduct is clearly getting more and more beyond the
reach of most claimants.
In 2018,
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that a decision favoring the police tells
officers that "they can shoot first and think later and it tells the
public that palpably unreasonable conduct will go unpunished."
Matthew T.
Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His
book, "The Executioner's Toll," 2010, was released by McFarland
Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter
@MatthewTMangino
To visit Creators CLICK HERE
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment