Critics argue governmental immunity doctrine prevents citizens from holding officials accountable for wrongdoing
Voters and lawmakers around the country are debating the controversial legal principle of governmental immunity.
As the only remaining challenger for the GOP nomination, former U.N. Ambassador Nimirata Haley expressed skepticism of former President Donald Trump’s appeal for presidential immunity to protect him from federal prosecution.
While his high-profile case has dominated national headlines in recent weeks, attorneys and lawmakers across the country have debated the lesser-known doctrine “qualified immunity,” sometimes referred to as governmental immunity, at the state level.
At Indiana’s GOP gubernatorial debate in December, multiple candidates pledged to protect the controversial legal standard.
By contrast, in January two assembly people in the New York State legislature introduced a bill designed to end governmental immunity for police officers.
Similar to its presidential counterpart, governmental immunity protects police, school staff, municipal employees and other government officials from individual liability in lawsuits and from compensating plaintiffs for damages.
Defenders claim this legal principle — first introduced by the Supreme Court in Pierson v. Ray (1967) — gives officials the freedom to perform their duties in good faith without frivolous lawsuits threatening their livelihood.
America was founded because of a rebellion against a king.
A king who could lock you up, indefinitely or decide to kill you without a trial. A king who would just kill you just for saying something he didn’t like. A king who was unjust and where there was no official rule of law other than his opinions and desires. A king does not always have respect for the voices of the people.
America was deliberately set up with checks and balances to avoid any one person acting or behaving as a king.
Critics claim that qualified immunity allows government officials, particularly the police, to abuse their power.
“The idea actually comes from the Old English doctrine of ‘The King Can Do No Wrong,’” said Johnson. “But last time I checked, America is a democracy — and we fired the king 250 years ago.”
It is viewed as a shield from accountability when people who are supposed to represent order break the law, as often occurs in police brutality cases.
In August, one group of critics, The Ohio Coalition to End Qualified Immunity, petitioned that state’s government to put a new constitutional amendment before voters this November.
If successfully added to the ballot, the proposal would have served as a referendum on governmental immunity, potentially ending the doctrine in the state for the foreseeable future.
The Attorney General’s office rejected that petition, just as it had before rejected two similar initiatives. Despite the setback, the group remains committed to pursuing legal means to end governmental immunity in Ohio.
“I have watched governmental immunity literally ruin peoples’ lives and rob them of justice when they have been wronged, often through no fault of their own, by folks who work for the government,” said Ven Johnson, a Detroit-based attorney.
In 2022, Johnson obtained a $100 million verdict — the largest ever for a case of its kind — on behalf of Jerry Blasingame in Edwards v. Grubbs (2022).
According to the lawsuit, Blasingame, who was 65 years old, had been panhandling before breaking his neck when an Atlanta police officer tased him in the back during an unwarranted foot chase.
That result contrasts with cases where the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the police in two controversial matters concerning police officers accused of using excessive force.
In both decisions — Burke v. Tahlequah (2021) and Villegas v. Ramon Cortesluna (2021) — the Supreme Court reversed rulings made by lower courts and held that the officers involved were each entitled to sovereign immunity.
The Ohio coalition is not the only critic of the governmental immunity.
Although accusations of police misconduct are often the highest profile cases invoking a governmental immunity defense, they are not limited to lawsuits against law enforcement.
The standard can also be used to protect government officials from personal legal liability in the aftermath of events like infrastructure failures or natural disasters.
It has also been used to defend school district employees. Representing the victims of the 2021 Oxford High School shooting in Oxford, Mich., Johnson brought negligence and gross negligence lawsuits against multiple employees from Oxford Community Schools.
However, in March 2023, Oakland County Circuit Court Judge Mary Ellen Brennan dismissed the lawsuit on the grounds of governmental immunity. Johnson is now on appeal on this issue before the Michigan Court of Appeals.
Activist organizations on both sides of the political spectrum continue to criticize governmental immunity, including both liberal and conservative lawmakers and judges.
On the federal level, several attempts have been made to erode the power of governmental immunity, but so far, none of these attempts have been successful.
Time after time we’ve seen these rights infringed upon by law enforcement officers who have failed to act in accordance with their ethical and moral duties.
Government Immunity was adopted from English common law — yes, England, from whom we fought for our independence — and originates from a term that translates to “The King Can Do No Wrong.”
In the U.S., this unjust law means that a civil suit or criminal prosecution cannot be brought against the city, state, or federal government or its agents without its consent — despite negligence or inaction that caused damage, injury, or even death.
In other words, the government has to waive its own immunity and agree to be sued, putting itself and its employees unfairly above “We The People.”
Johnson has borne witness to the unfair practice, and the law firm continues to fight against cases involving immunity plea to this day.
It is against the law to deprive a person of their Constitutional rights, including freedom from the use of excessive force and false arrest or imprisonment.
A federal judge who oversaw a $100 million police misconduct case against the City of Atlanta and one of its officers granted a motion on Wednesday that clears the city of its direct liability and shaves off more than half the verdict awarded to a 69-year-old man paralyzed after the officer tased him.
Judge Steve C. Jones said that although the jury found Officer Jon Grubbs used excessive force when he tased Jerry Blasingame in 2018, there was not enough evidence that the city’s policies or training standards were the problem.
The judge granted a motion for judgment filed by the City of Atlanta, which overturned the $60 million in compensatory damages that the verdict last month brought down against it. Still, the judge upheld the $40 million verdict against the officer.
Jones said he did not make the decision lightly as “trial by jury is a hallmark of our justice system, a bedrock principle of this country.” However, he said, the court must “correct a clear error in those rare cases where juries reach a legally unsupportable result.”
School is a place where students are supposed to feel safe and supported.
As the families affected by the tragedy at Oxford High School in Michigan and the mass slaying at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School take the fight to their front door to force real change to hold the faculty and staff accountable for failing to act on undeniable warning signs and lack of action on that tragic day.
Officials offer “thoughts and prayers,” but do nothing to prevent more shootings in the future.
Nothing can replace what families have lost, but victims of school shootings argue the best way to stand up to the inaction jeopardizing our kids’ lives involves eliminating immunity from the government’s toolbox
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