The people have fucking spoken.
Twice.
Three times!
Elected, reinstated, reelected!
The people have spoken, and shockingly republicans spent a fuck load of the tax payers money to be sure that they didn’t misspeak.
‘Taxpayer money.’
They’ll do unlimited court attacks, knowing that they can’t actually be forced to pay for the nonsense.
If you made police unions liable for police violence, you’d see a rapid drop in aggressive policing.
So perhaps fight fire with fire and force them to uphold the law as written, and ignore the SCOTUS decision made in error.
16 Crucial Words That Went Missing From a Landmark Civil Rights Law
The phrase, seemingly deleted in error, undermines the basis for qualified immunity, the legal shield that protects police officers from suits for misconduct.
By Adam Liptak Reporting from Washington
May 15, 2023
In a routine decision in March, a unanimous three-judge panel of a federal appeals court ruled against a Texas inmate who was injured when the ceiling of the hog barn he was working in collapsed. The court, predictably, said the inmate could not overcome qualified immunity, the much-criticized legal shield that protects government officials from suits for constitutional violations.
The author of the decision, Judge Don R. Willett, then did something unusual. He issued a separate concurring opinion to draw attention to the “game-changing arguments” in a recent law review article, one that seemed to demonstrate that the Supreme Court’s entire qualified immunity jurisprudence was based on a mistake.
“Wait, what?” Judge Willett wrote, incredulous.
In 1871, after the Civil War, Congress enacted a law that allowed suits against state officials for violations of constitutional rights. But the Supreme Court has said that the law, usually called Section 1983, did not displace immunities protecting officials that existed when the law was enacted. The doctrine of qualified immunity is based on that premise.
But the premise is wrong, Alexander A. Reinert, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, wrote in the article, “Qualified Immunity’s Flawed Foundation,” published in The California Law Review.
Between 1871, when the law was enacted, and 1874, when a government official produced the first compilation of federal laws, Professor Reinert wrote, 16 words of the original law went missing. Those words, Professor Reinert wrote, showed that Congress had indeed overridden existing immunities.
“What if the Reconstruction Congress had explicitly stated — right there in the original statutory text — that it was nullifying all common-law defenses against Section 1983 actions?” Judge Willett asked. “That is, what if Congress’s literal language unequivocally negated the original interpretive premise for qualified immunity?”
The original version of the law, the one that was enacted in 1871, said state officials who subject “any person within the jurisdiction of the United States to the deprivation of any rights, privileges or immunities secured by the Constitution of the United States, shall, any such law, statute, ordinance, regulation, custom or usage of the state to the contrary notwithstanding, be liable to the party injured in any action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress.”
The words in italics, for reasons lost to history, were omitted from the first compilation of federal laws in 1874, which was prepared by a government official called “the reviser of the federal statutes.”
“The reviser’s error, whether one of omission or commission, has never been corrected,” Judge Willett wrote.
The logic of the Supreme Court’s qualified immunity jurisprudence is that Congress would not have displaced existing immunities without saying so. But Professor Reinert argued that Congress did say so, in so many words.
“The omitted language confirms that the Reconstruction Congress in 1871 intended to provide a broad remedy for civil rights violations by state officials,” Professor Reinert said in an interview, noting that the law was enacted soon after the three constitutional amendments ratified after the Civil War: to outlaw slavery, insist on equal protection and guard the right to vote.
“Along with other contemporaneous evidence, including legislative history, it helps to show that Congress meant to fully enforce the Reconstruction Amendments via a powerful new cause of action,” Professor Reinert said.
Judge Willett, who was appointed by President Donald J. Trump, focused on the words of the original statute “in this text-centric judicial era when jurists profess unswerving fidelity to the words Congress chose.”
Qualified immunity, which requires plaintiffs to show that the officials had violated a constitutional right that was clearly established in a previous ruling, has been widely criticized by scholars and judges across the ideological spectrum. Justice Clarence Thomas, for instance, wrote that it does not appear to resemble the immunities available in 1871.
Professor Reinert’s article said that “is only half the story.”
“The real problem,” he wrote, “is that no qualified immunity doctrine at all should apply in Section 1983 actions, if courts stay true to the text adopted by the enacting Congress.”
Joanna Schwartz, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the author of “Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable,” said that “there is general agreement that the qualified immunity doctrine, as it currently operates, looks nothing like any protections that may have existed in 1871.” The new article, she said, identified “additional causes for skepticism.”
She added that “Judge Willett’s concurring opinion has brought much-needed, and well-deserved, attention to Alex Reinert’s insightful article.”
Judge Willett wrote that he and his colleagues are “middle-management circuit judges” who cannot overrule Supreme Court decisions. “Only that court,” he wrote, “can definitively grapple with Section 1983’s enacted text and decide whether it means what it says.”
Lawyers for the injured Texas inmate, Kevion Rogers, said they were weighing their options.
“The scholarship that Judge Willett unearthed in his concurrence is undoubtedly important to the arguments that civil rights litigants can make in the future,” the lawyers, Matthew J. Kita and Damon Mathias, said in a statement.
“Normally,” they added, “you cannot raise a new argument for reversal for the first time on appeal, much less at the Supreme Court of the United States. But one would think that if the Supreme Court acknowledges that it has been reciting and applying the statute incorrectly for nearly a century, there must be some remedy available to litigants whose judgments are not yet final.”
Adam Liptak covers the Supreme Court and writes Sidebar, a column on legal developments. A graduate of Yale Law School, he practiced law for 14 years before joining The Times in 2002. @adamliptak • Facebook
A version of this article appears in print on May 16, 2023, Section A, Page 15 of the New York edition with the headline: 16 Crucial Words That Went Missing From a Landmark Civil Rights Law.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The young Black lawmakers were reinstated by local officials after being booted from the GOP-dominated Statehouse, but only on an interim basis.
Thursday’s election came as lawmakers are preparing to return to Nashville later this month for a special session to address possibly changing the state’s gun control laws.
While Jones and Pearson’s reelection to their old posts won’t make a significant dent to the Republican supermajority inside the Legislature, they are expected to push back heavily against some of their GOP colleagues’ policies.
It wasn’t until this spring that their political careers received a boost when they joined fellow Democrat Rep. Gloria Johnson in a protest for more gun control on the House floor.
The demonstration took place just days after a fatal shooting in Nashville at a private Christian school where a shooter killed three children and three adults.
The move briefly left about 140,000 voters in primarily Black districts in Nashville and Memphis with no representation in the Tennessee House.
I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Good fucking bot
Right?? I was about to thank the dude for such a thoughtful tldr but it’s just a bot
You can still thank the bot, probably puts you in their good books when AI takes over.
Fuck yeah! These guys were impressive before all the bullshit went down, and it just made them even more motivated. It also forced them to be fully empowered by their constituency, multiple times, which is just the icing on the cake. Can’t wait to see what they get up to!
Side note, I dare you to listen to Pearson and/or Jones for more than a few minutes and not tear up. They’re legitimately inspiring and damn good at their jobs.
You okay, US? Been removing voting locales, preventing people from getting hydrated when standing in line, literally trying to prevent the end of an election cycle and now… this.
Democracy, does that mean anything anymore over there, or is it just decorative?
We’re are learning that building a government based on the idea that the members of that government will act in good faith was fucking stupid.
Here’s to hoping we can figure out how to solve the bad-faith problem without Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo.
You know, I’ve heard it said that democracies founded in Europe after WW2 had an advantage because they could see the result of mistakes in the USA’s founding.
Like clearly X, Y, and Z was a mistake that they couldn’t have known at the time - but now we know better, so let’s not repeat that.
Hey, don’t lump the rest of the country in with these ass-backward hillbillies. This kind of shit only happens in red states.
It was fucked when they were expelled buy that collection of racist idiots. This took a while to happen, but I’m relieved the second rep regained his seat.
No, we are not ok. Please send help.
republicans have increasingly made “This is not a Democracy, it is a Republic” one of their rallying cries.
That about sums it up
This is excellent news. America needs to keep fighting back.
I didn’t realize they were both named Justin. Good job, Justins.
Little known fact. A group of justins is called a gaggle. Youre welcome.
I thought they were called a Justice.
This makes me happy!
Those two have immaculate hair!
Just one of many great features.
I am not a fan of gun control but I am a fan of free speech. I am glad these young men are back in office. Opposing views are important for democracy.
Bit hypocritical that you’re into vehicle control SpeedLimit55
Lol yep!
Out of curiosity, why are you
againstnot a fan of gun control?What kind of gun control laws do you think people are trying to pass that you would consider unnecessary or dangerous?
I’m not a fan of government regulations beyond basic safety measures. Guns don’t just randomly shoot people.
Cars do not eject passengers violently onto the road. Safety belt laws try to prevent that from happening and it works rather good. So you still get to drive but there are regulations to prevent the human factor of causing to be ejected from cars.
I dunno if this makes sense to you, maybe not the best comparison but it popped into my head suddenly.
There are also a lot of safety laws and rules for firearms. The thing is, it still requires people to follow them and not be a psychopath.
True but cars also have more laws and rules. Seems the matter of enforcement could be an issue. Driving on public roads allows law enforcement to check if you comply. How are laws enforced for guns once in the hands of private individuals? Or perhaps there are no laws and rules from that point onwards? I honestly do not know. But I can see huge issues to enforce rules and laws if this has to be checked on the regular on private property. Perhaps some laws and rules where you, the private individual, have to come to some checkpoint? Depends on what laws and rules of course and again, I have no clue yet on this. Seems guns slip through the cracks once bought.
But as uninformed as I am, it’s the militia part of the 2nd that could be an opening to get some regulations in place? If the 2nd can be read that, sure have guns but you have to be in a wel regulated militia to own them and storage is at designated places which can be checked for compliancy. Means no guns at home of course but the main point, you can own a gun and also be part of a militia, as noted in the 2nd, would be in place and should satisfy people?
Well, lets have the flood of posts telling me I don’t understand the 2nd properly and people could be very right about that one 😀
The main disconnect is that even with adding more laws, regulations, and enforcement; it still boils down to someone being of sound enough mind to not decide to haul ass down Main Street on Christmas Eve and crush several families with their SUV. You never see people blaming the car in those cases.
You had to take a drugs and alcohol course, pass a written test, pass a vision test, and pass a driving test to be allowed to drive, and then renew the license every x number of years. Then, if you want to drive a motorcycle, or drive a large commercial truck, you need to take additional written and driving tests and even drug tests. For the safety of all.
The system we have in place already has culpability focused on the individual who passed all that and takes part in a community/societal contract that the license represents, unless there is a defect in the vehicle that caused it.
Say there was a constitutional amendment about the right to drive a vehicle, the onus would be on car manufacturers to create and/or take a dutiful part in a system that builds in physical safety features and create a sales process that trained the buyers on safety, effectively providing a standardized safety ‘licensing’ for new drivers as an integral part of buying their vehicles.
Does that sound completely unreasonable? Or is Death Race 2000 the standard now?
I understand. Could be the reason that because so many regulations are in place for cats that people stopped pointing at cars as the cause and started focussing on people? Lets not forget that when cars started to enter society people blamed cars for lots of bad things, same as when trains started to run. Regulations were applied and can be checked regularly. It made blaming cars and trains less of a thing, like you pointed out. So perhaps if we can create locations where guns can be stored and checked out? You would still have the legal right to own guns and you can access them to shoot at ranges and such. Would allow for interesting and new ways of checking and enforcing laws. You would still have crazy people shooting places up, I have no doubt, but perhaps society will see “enough is done to safeguard within reason, something else needs to be done apart from guns”?
Law enforcement only gets to check that you comply with driving laws and regulations if you break them in front of them. They don’t just get to pull people over randomly and run checks on them because they feel like it because of the 4th amendment. There is also the difference between a privilege like driving, and a constitutional right. No other right requires that you allow law enforcement to keep tabs on you or your property. No one should live in a police state like that
As to your understanding of the 2nd, the “well regulated” part means operating smoothly and in good order. It’s fallen out of every day parlance, but a well regulated clock or well regulated engine used to be in more common parlance and still is used in the military I believe. So a plain English reading would be “A fully functional and well operating militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the rights of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” This is backed up by the Militia Act passed 2 years following the ratification, that confirmed that to join a militia require the militia member to provide their own arms and minimum starting ammunition. Without an individual right to keep and bear arms, that would make it hard to form said militia.
Thanks for the reply. I’m clearly out of my depth on this one and struggle to make sense of it all. I’m not American so this all is so strange to me.
Personally I would say the constitution should not be so fixed in time as times and needs change. This would allow the 2nd to be adapted to modern times and needs.
But as I am not American I have 0 say in this and will step aside.
Yes, but there’s evidence that basic gun control laws work.
1.) Universal Background Checks 2.) Gun holding periods 3.) Banning under 21 purchases (I’d be okay with it if you have someone to co-sign with you - that they are responsible as well).
Like you’d prevent something like one in four homicides. And people still fight against this. This is what it means to stand against gun control.
Honestly, I wish we had a gun registry just like we have a car registry as it would prevent people transferring ownership to criminals and people that would otherwise fail background checks.
I just don’t understand the need for guns in this day and age? Everybody knows how dangerous they are. The obsession with the craven desire to own guns is beyond me. How many people have died this year from mass shootings so far? On record pace this year. Ban guns, deaths reduce substantially. Just an opinion.
A large percentage of the US is rural. That usually means concerns of animal predators, distant neighbors, and police response times of 45+ minutes. Most people own a firearm as a form of self defense for an immediate threat, or for hunting.
Yeah I kinda get the theory behind that but the reality I feel is completely at odds when considering your massively populous areas. Also how often are people defending themselves against wildlife? I’m really curious actually as I have no idea on the stats about this.
I’m curious about your feelings on armed law enforcement.
Mixed really, it is a growing necessity but being in the UK only in required/specific situations.
The things you listed are already in place, and have been in place for decades, though the age requirement differs by state. For example, in Florida, it’s 18 for a long gun and 21 for a pistol. There is often a 3 day holding period, unless you own a license (concealed carry or firearm permit). You cannot buy a gun from any retailer or FTL without a background check. You also have to fill out a firearm transfer form to purchase the gun, which also registers the serial number to your name.
The only part where it breaks down is private sales, but the person selling the firearm can be held liable if they end up selling to someone who cannot legally own a gun. The same scenario of registering the sale applies to private car sales. You can sell a car to someone, and if you don’t inform the DOT you’ve sold the car (and the buyer never registers it), you’re on the hook if they find the car abandoned on the side of the road or at a crime scene.
…but… they’re not.
1.) Background checks are only required at federally licensed gun dealers, however only 40% of dealers in the US are licensed. Guns sold at gun shows, flea markets, etc arent subject to that requirement. And only 20 US states have added requirements to the background checks…not even half…so your claim that this has already been implemented is not exactly true, or should be HEAVILY caveated.
2.) Only 19 states have red flag laws (which would come up in background checks).
3.) Only 10 states have withholding periods.
So…yeah. A lot of room for improvement. That’s why I don’t get arguments against gun control. It makes us safer, it statistically prevents A LOT of homicides/suicides, and generally just make sense.
Not personally a fan of general increases in gun control because I don’t think many of the ideas floated would help more than they would hurt law abiding citizens, but it really should be free and quick for anyone to request a background check for private party gun sales and thus should be mandatory. My own personal experience is background checks are done at my local gun shows, but yes there should be mandatory universal background checks and this 100% can be improved.
Federally mandated waiting periods would be hard and burdensome to enforce on private party sales, but I’d be open to discussions on how it could be done. Red flag laws are also tricky because we have a presumption of innocence and protection against searches and seizures, but if it requires that you get to face a judge before they take your guns away then once again, an argument worth having. I argue against security theater gun control, and because I believe any restrictions of constitutional rights should by default be argued against since we need damn solid reasons to restrict rights.
No, but they make it infinitely easier to shoot people.
Owning a car makes it infinitely easier to drive it into a crowd of people. Owning a knife makes it infinitely easier to stab people.
It’s not an outstanding argument when they all require someone to make the decision to hurt people.
And owning a spoon makes it infinitely easier to to go on a spoon based killing spree in a school. But wierdly, despite everyone in the US owning spoons and there being far more spoons than guns, spoons based killing sprees are much less common than shooting sprees.
It’s almost, almost like one is a tool specifically designed to kill people as quickly and effectively as possible and the other isn’t. And in the very unlikely event that is the case, we should probably regulate them differently.
Yes, but cars and knives (of certain kinds) have functions other than hurting people. Making the assumption that they’re exactly the same as a tool whose sole purpose is death and destruction is disingenuous at best.
I dont disagree that they’re “just” tools, tools that people will use as they see fit. But if you can’t see that some tools are inherently more destructive and less useful then I dont think you’re trustworthy enough to speak on whether or not they should be regulated in any way.
I’m going to throw a curve ball here and say yes, obviously the purpose of a gun is to kill things. Americans have an inherent right to self defense through use of arms, which is the entire purpose of the 2nd amendment. Killing animals for food is of course another common task, along with livestock protection, but self defense against other humans using force was enshrined in the Bill of Rights. The founders thought about the fact that these arms could be used in crime and violence, and decided that freedom comes with risk and it was worth that risk. The country was founded on principles that the government is not there to provide perfect safety to all individuals and to dictate their lives, but instead set ground rules and let people live their lives however they see fit. There are consequences for actions, not preventing all actions with negative consequences. There’s a reason that the phrase “those who give up freedom for safety deserve neither” is such a famous (or infamous) quote in America.
Many people may feel they do not need to protect themselves with force of arms in modern society and would prefer more safety over more freedom, but until such time as over 3/4s of the population agree to cede their right to self defense to the government and change the 2nd with an overriding amendment, these tools are doing the job they are designed for. This argument that cars and knives and what have you serve another purpose so it’s “different” just strikes me as odd. Hell, the amount of people killed by cars when killing people is in fact the opposite of it’s purpose, is more concerning if you think about it because cars kill so many more people than the guns that are actually designed specifically for killing. But to do that we need to limit cars to traveling at 35mph and have internal and external airbags and giant soft air tube tires that can safely run over people without causing harm, but no one is advocating to make laws mandating such and no one would buy a car like that if it was available.
We require mandatory training before giving out drivers licenses and insurance in most states and a system where we take away licenses if people are too reckless. That’s because a hundred thousand people die from cars every year. Why not do the same for guns which kill tens of thousands of people a year? Instead we have to have mass shooter drills and emergency bleed-out kits in public areas rather than address this.
I think gun safety training should be mandatory as part of the US education system starting from the beginning of school. There are more guns than people in the US, so odds are good that many children will come into contact with them at some point, and they should know what they are and how to be safe. Unfortunately, the left acts like this will indoctrinate children towards being pro guns like the right thinks sex education will make kids have sex. Leaving these basic life knowledge “up to the family” to teach is just such a shitty idea.
The issue of licensing is tricky because unlike driving a car, gun ownership is a constitutional right and we do not have a good track record of being fair and equitable when we make practicing rights require any “cost of entry”. Other than that and as has been mentioned already, many places require licenses and extra training to concealed carry, and if you are reckless with guns or just even with criminal behavior you can lose your gun rights.
Also, even if mass shootings just weren’t a thing I think having trauma kits along with AEDs in public areas is just good practice, and adding hostile attacker drills to existing fire, earthquake, tornado, etc drills is also probably good practice. The more emergency situations people are even somewhat trained to “handle”, the better they react to both known and unknown emergencies. When the brain is overwhelmed in an emergency, having any ingrained reflex your subconscious can fall back on prevents freezing or panicked random action.
Licensing, testing, and insurance are the requirement to take a vehicle into public. You can operate a vehicle on private land with none of those things.
The same is required for firearms in most states; minus insurance, though it’s highly recommended.
We should be asking why certain people are deciding they want to hurt as many people as possible before they can be killed; not asking why they chose their particular method. The ownership of firearms is not a new concept in the US, but “going down in a blaze of glory” has been a somewhat recent phenomenon increasing at a terrifying and disturbing rate.
I always find it amazing when people make the argument that we shouldn’t regulate something because all we really need to do is solve the fundamental problems in society that ever cause people to do the wrong thing. Thanks buddy I’ll get right on that
Yeah passing laws is too hard guys. Lets just change the human condition instead.
It’s already heavily regulated. Most of the regulations people want are already in place, or an outright ban.
When something that has been around for a long time with heavy regulation, but there’s a growing trend; then most likely it’s something else influencing the problem.
Well when you assume any regulation of something is “heavy”, I suppose you could make that argument.
Republicans are blocking not only gun control legislation but any increase to mental health services, so they’re not making that argument in good faith. They even passed new laws in Georgia allowing people with diagnosed mental illness to have guns when they weren’t allowed before.
Guns are the only way left to cause mass murder at this scale. We restrict access to planes and cars already, you don’t think guns should have some additional scrutiny?
The situation in Georgia is certainly problematic, and I agree with you that people with certain diagnosed mental illnesses should not own firearms. However, firearms are certainly far from unregulated compared to driving.
Have you tried to purchase a firearm? It’s not like going to the hardware store and walking out with a brand new chainsaw. You have to fill out all of the paperwork for a background check, wait for it to come back clean (often takes hours), fill out a transfer/registration form, pay applicable taxes, and then there’s a holding period. The only way around the holding part is if you possess a concealed carry or firearm license, which requires training, more background checks, more taxes and forms, and a very long waiting period (usually months) for the permit to be issued.
These same requirements are also in place at gun shows, by the way. You often have to send your purchase to a local FTL for the holdover period, if you don’t already have a license.
Also, in regards to the mass murder issue, France was having issues with people driving trucks into crowds a few years ago. England has mass stabbings, and Australia has machete sprees. The truly alarming thing with the US is the growing frequency.
You forgot the giant loophole of private purchases, people selling guns via Instagram etc.
It’s not an honest argument to compare car rammings or UK stabbing a to gun deaths. A man literally shot 500 people in Las Vegas with an assault rifle in a concert while car homicides are in single digits per attack. The U.S. is the only developed country with mass shootings and you keep trying to ignore guns as the problem and looking at everything but.
There are a lot of ways to cause mass murder so it certainly isn’t “the only way left”. People have and will used other methods. Something as simple as fire is a weapon with a history of use in terrorism.
Guns do have laws associated with them. You’d know this if you ever went to a shop to buy one or just looked at the laws. I don’t need to pass a background check to buy a car from the dealership. There is no crime for a felon to own a car. A felon could even get a license to operate a car in public. There is no crime for “brandishing” a car in public.
Which law in GA are you talking about? Most states don’t outright ban ownership over a diagnosis or seeking treatment. Making that a criteria becomes tricky when trying to determine what counts or who gets to decide. I’m sure you would find a ban on voting for the mentally ill questionable if say Republican law makers decided what counts.
Involuntary commitment is a problem for gun ownership federally regardless of state laws as well. It should kinda take a lot to restrict a right and there are problems with essentially punishing people for seeking treatment.
Although I don’t agree I get your point.
What about the 3rd one?….🤔
She never lost it.
How strange, I wonder what was different about the third one as opposed to these two guys…
ooooo! ooooo! I know! 👋
Do you guys get off on making assumptions with as little info as possible?
Who’s is making assumptions? There are 3 representatives. 2 of them are black and 1 was white. The 2 black men were expelled and the white woman was not. Those are facts not assumptions.
From the article: “Ultimately, Johnson, who is white, narrowly avoided expulsion while Pearson and Jones were booted by the predominantly white GOP caucus.”
Further (emphasis mine):
House Republican leaders have repeatedly denied that race was a factor in the expulsion hearings. Democrats have disagreed, with Johnson countering that the only reason that she wasn’t expelled was due to her being white.
Yes that is surely what happened. But I’m talking about pretending to know the details about why she was not expelled. It certainly could be based on race.
It’s okay to not know.
Have you ever even been to Tennessee? Or the South at all?
Racism is the answer in these situations. It’s always the answer.
deleted by creator
I can tell you what wasn’t different. It wasn’t her skin color. /s
Oh that’s awesome
Edit: that’s right, I forgot the expulsion was racially motivated
Good they deserve it.
Good! We need more people like them in government.
Removed by mod
Not sure you know what communism is.
So, economically and socially successful countries like, the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, France, Switzerland, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, etc are all “communist” countries, right?
In that case, sign me up for communism.
My dude probably thinks that neoliberals are left wing too
💀
