{"id":894577,"date":"2021-10-18T15:44:27","date_gmt":"2021-10-18T19:44:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=894577"},"modified":"2021-10-18T15:44:29","modified_gmt":"2021-10-18T19:44:29","slug":"supreme-court-backs-law-enforcement-in-pair-of-civil-rights-lawsuits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/supreme-court-backs-law-enforcement-in-pair-of-civil-rights-lawsuits\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court Backs Law Enforcement in Pair of Civil Rights Lawsuits"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fsupreme-court-backs-law-enforcement-in-pair-of-civil-rights-lawsuits%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=894577&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div readability=\"28.8\">\n\t\t\t<span class=\"article-category\"><a class href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/courts\/\">The Courts<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"article-excerpt\">President Biden has lobbied unsuccessfully to end &#8216;qualified immunity&#8217;<\/p>\n<figure class=\"post-thumbnail-container relative lg:mr-24 w-full my-4 mb-8\">\n\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"736\" height=\"514\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/GettyImages-1229223039_736x514-736x514-1.jpg\" class=\"w-full lazyload blur-up wp-post-image\" alt srcset=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 736px) 100vw, 736px\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/GettyImages-1229223039_736x514.jpg 736w, https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/GettyImages-1229223039_736x514-300x210.jpg 300w, https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/GettyImages-1229223039_736x514-703x491.jpg 703w\" data-sizes=\"auto\" \/><figcaption class=\"absolute text-white p-4 w-full text-right text-xs bottom-0 bg-black opacity-75\">\n\t\t\t\tGetty Images\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\t\t\t<span class=\"text-gray text-xs md:text-lg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/author\/kevin-daley\/\" title=\"Posts by Kevin Daley\" class=\"author url fn text-red-700\" rel=\"author\">Kevin Daley<\/a> \u2022 October 18, 2021 3:41 pm<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<div readability=\"116.10194276165\">\n<p>The Supreme Court on Monday reinstated immunity for police officers accused of civil rights violations in two separate cases from California and Oklahoma.<\/p>\n<p>Monday\u2019s cases involved an excessive force claim during a domestic disturbance call and the fatal shooting of an Oklahoma man. Lower courts refused to grant qualified immunity to officers in both cases, decisions Monday\u2019s unsigned rulings summarily reversed.<\/p>\n<p>President Joe Biden unsuccessfully lobbied Congress to pass legislation curtailing qualified immunity, a defense available to police in civil rights cases that is extremely difficult for plaintiffs to surmount. Even as Biden advocates for reform, the government\u2019s reliance on qualified immunity has <a href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/biden-administration\/biden-administration-embraces-democrats-least-favorite-legal-defense\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">continued unabated<\/a>. And the administration has yet to pursue policy changes or tactical legal moves it could enact without Congress.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scribd.com\/document\/533516641\/Rivas-Villegas-v-Cortesluna-Supreme-Court-decision\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">California case<\/a> arose from a 2016 domestic disturbance call. A 12-year-old girl called 911 and told the dispatcher that she was barricaded in a room inside her home with her mother and her 15-year-old sister for fear of her mother\u2019s boyfriend, Ramon Cortesluna. The girl reported that Cortesluna was using a chainsaw to destroy something inside the house and that he was a heavy drinker with &#8220;anger issues.&#8221; All three feared for their safety.<\/p>\n<p>Responding officers ordered Cortesluna to come out of the house when they arrived. Cortesluna did so, but a knife was visible to the officers in his left pocket. Police fired two nonlethal bean bag rounds to immobilize him when he lowered his hands toward the knife. One of the officers, Daniel Rivas-Villegas, then pushed Cortesluna to the ground and pressed his knee into Cortesluna\u2019s back for approximately eight seconds as he handcuffed him. This tactic is called a control hold.<\/p>\n<p>Cortesluna sued the officers for violating his civil rights. A divided three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied Rivas-Villegas\u2019s claim of qualified immunity, saying that &#8220;kneeling on a prone and non-resisting person\u2019s back&#8221; could constitute excessive force.<\/p>\n<p>A coalition of California law enforcement groups filed an amicus <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scribd.com\/document\/533517016\/Rivas-Villegas-v-Cortesluna-amicus-brief-of-California-State-Sheriffs-Association\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">brief<\/a> urging the justices to reverse the Ninth Circuit\u2019s decision. They said that the state\u2019s police instruction manual trains officers in proper use of control holds, and that Rivas-Villegas\u2019s actions &#8220;conformed perfectly&#8221; to those standards.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The practical ramifications of the Ninth Circuit\u2019s change in direction with the Cortesluna decision are staggering,&#8221; the brief reads. &#8220;Without the ability to use a knee to briefly control an armed suspect for the purposes of handcuffing, officers are left with almost no option to protect their own safety.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scribd.com\/document\/533516327\/City-of-Tahlequah-v-Bond-Supreme-Court-decision\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">second case<\/a> involved an Oklahoma man, Dominic Rollice, who was gunned down by police in his ex-wife\u2019s garage in 2016. Rollice was drunk and refused to leave the premises or submit to a pat down. Officers shot and killed him after he picked up a hammer and lifted it above his head, as though he were going to throw it or charge them.<\/p>\n<p>The Tenth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied the officers qualified immunity, suggesting they recklessly created a deadly situation by &#8220;cornering&#8221; Rollice in the garage.<\/p>\n<p>Monday\u2019s decisions indicate the justices will continue to protect law enforcement against supposedly wrongful denials of qualified immunity. In the last two decades, the justices have regularly reversed lower court decisions that denied immunity to police, sometimes without briefing and argument. A <a href=\"https:\/\/scholarship.law.umn.edu\/cgi\/viewcontent.cgi?article=1039&amp;context=headnotes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">2016 study<\/a> showed the High Court processed 18 police immunity cases between 2000 and 2015, favoring police in 16 of them. Criminal justice reformers <a href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/biden-administration\/biden-administration-embraces-democrats-least-favorite-legal-defense\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">hoped<\/a> this practice would abate following the conviction of Derek Chauvin for killing George Floyd.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;These two decisions are not extraordinary applications of qualified immunity, but they do suggest that the Supreme Court is not interested in reconsidering or revising any fundamental aspects of the doctrine,&#8221; said the Cato Institute\u2019s Jay Schweikert, a lawyer and police immunity researcher.<\/p>\n<p>Both disputes turned on whether prior decisions put officers on notice that control holds or &#8220;cornering&#8221; suspects violates their civil rights. The Supreme Court\u2019s qualified immunity precedents hold that a plaintiff must prove an officer\u2019s misconduct violated &#8220;clearly established&#8221; law in order to defeat immunity. The Court said no prior case established that the officers behaved unlawfully in both of Monday\u2019s rulings.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Both of today\u2019s decisions reinforce the idea that, in general, overcoming qualified immunity still requires a prior case with nearly identical facts,&#8221; Schweikert said.<\/p>\n<p>The cases are No. 20-1539 <em>Rivas-Villegas<\/em> v. <em>Cortesluna<\/em> and No. 20-1668 <em>City of Tahlequah<\/em> v. <em>Bond<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Courts President Biden has lobbied unsuccessfully to end &#8216;qualified immunity&#8217;  Getty Images  Kevin Daley \u2022 October 18, 2021 3:41 pm The Supreme &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-894577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=894577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=894577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=894577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=894577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}