WASHINGTON– On the exact same morning that the Supreme Court provided a landmark opinion maintaining the rights of gay and transgender Americans, the nation’s greatest court brushed aside a number of cases that would have permitted it to readdress law enforcement officers’ broad immunity from claims over cops brutality.
Justices on the Supreme Court turned away more than a dozen lawsuits connected to qualified immunity, the legal doctrine which lets law enforcement officer get away responsibility for using strategies that haven’t been specifically prohibited in previous court decisions. Even when policemans plainly breach civil liberties, they are typically not held accountable since the right that they breach wasn’t clearly established by the courts at the time.
The decision came three weeks after the authorities killing of George Floyd triggered nationwide demonstrations. The mass assistance of the Black Lives Matter motion has swiftly ushered in popular opinion shifts on law enforcement issues, although it’s unclear whether law enforcement will as soon as again stave off wider changes to America’s policing system.
The Supreme Court, per requirement practice, didn’t explain why it brushed off the cases. However Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that he had formerly expressed his doubt about “ou