What is Qualified Immunity?
In a nutshell, qualified immunity protects police officers who violate a person’s rights (everything from unlawful detention, unconstitutional searches and seizures, to outright murder). Qualified immunity makes it extremely difficult to sue police officers for their misconduct. The idea of “qualified immunity”, (as distinct from the idea of “absolute immunity”) was literally made up by the Supreme Court in the late 1960’s. Judges, for instance, enjoy “absolute immunity” which means that they cannot be sued under any circumstances for any rulings they make. According to the Supreme Court’s creation of the notion of qualified immunity, police officers can only be successfully sued if they commit the same type of misconduct which a court has previously ruled on in a different case that held police responsible. As only a slight exaggeration, if a previous court has ruled that a police officer can be sued for shooting a suspect in the back with a red-colored gun, and in a new case, the officer shoots a suspect in the back with a blue-colored gun, the court will consider that the 2 circumstances are not the same and will therefore dismiss the lawsuit against the officer, citing that the circumstances were not exact, and therefore there was no previous ruling on the same set of facts.
In almost every other profession, practitioners can be sued for their negligent or outright malicious behavior. Doctors carry lots of malpractice insurance in the event they do something leading to harm of a patient. Without the ability to sue bad doctors, people would keep getting hurt under their care. Electricians, plumbers and other tradespeople can equally be held liable when their incompetence or negligence damages a home or business, but police get a free pass for circumstances which are arguably more important – the liberty and life of others. It is a tragic irony that police want to hold you responsible for your actions but do not want to be held accountable for theirs.