What can be done at the state level?
By Julia Shumway | Arizona Capitol Times
If you or a family member has been injured in an auto accident or diagnosed with mesothelioma, a barrage of television ads will remind you that you can sue.
But if a police officer shoots you, sics a dog on you or breaks into your house, you probably have no case. That’s thanks to the decades-old legal doctrine of qualified immunity created by the U.S. Supreme Court, a doctrine activists on both the left and right want to change.
Limiting qualified immunity at the state level made a list of five policy changes House and Senate Democrats hope to make during a special session they requested in response to the police killings of George Floyd in Minnesota and Dion Johnson in Phoenix. At the federal level, Libertarian Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan introduced a bill this week to prohibit qualified immunity in federal civil cases.
And the Supreme Court is set to decide any day whether it will hear at least one of more than a dozen cases challenging qualified immunity in its next term.
