I realize that a huge number of people completely disagree with that, and I don't really know how to persuade any of them other than to urge them to examine history and note the consequences of authoritarianism.
Put another way, if your local DMV agent is acting funny, you can still sue the DMV, even if you can't sue the agent directly, FWIU
Anyway, hopefully the SC will throw this all out in the coming weeks.
It only protects a government employee who makes a discretionary decision as part of their normal duties. This might mean they get it wrong, but if they can show their decision was reasonable and (where relevant) pursuant to a process established by the agency, that's fine. In that case, the problem is the process not the employee, and so the proper defendant is the agency not the employee that is simply following procedures set forth by the agency.
DMV agents are probably not very wealthy. By suing them you would simply drive an underpaid worker into bankruptcy and probably never get much money back.
Meanwhile, the DMV can easily scapegoat it's employee and never reform or make any systematic changes. Furthermore you would have no recourse to sue them directly since they can just keep hiring more poor workers to be thrown under the bus.
Ultimately the tax payers (or voters) need to keep the DMV accountable. There is no alternative. Democracy doesn't have shortcuts. The tax payers have to pay when the government screws up. More to the point - the tax payer ALWAYS ends up paying when the government screws up, without exception, 100% of the time. Either they pay by having a corrupt DMV that hurts society and everyone at large, or they pay through lawsuits and higher costs at the DMV.
Because that's basically what you're saying you want.
And anyways, if the DMV agent was acting in their capacity as a DMV employee and following established procedure, the DMV would end up paying their legal costs and settlements against the employee anyways...but without getting a say in the defense against the underlying lawsuit.
One approach would be to have the judge say, "actually that addition looks fine to me, the commissioners shall pay you the corresponding value out of their kids' college funds."
Another would be, "I'm not the planning commission, that's their decision to make, unless they've acted outside the bounds of their charter, tough shit."
Qualified immunity is essentially the latter.
Qualified immunity applies precisely because they didn't do anything illegal (based on the limited facts of the hypo). If they did something illegal, then qualified immunity would not apply.
QI completely sidesteps the question "is it illegal" by replacing it with "has a suitable court ever established a precedent of suitable specificity saying that this is illegal when carried out by a government official/employee"?
Which is likely how Gauvin will walk, since despite killing person being illegal, there are no suitable court precedents ruling with sufficient specificity that a government agent killing a person is illegal.
QI applies if the government employee shows they acted reasonably in exercising discretion in performing their job. It doesn't matter whether or not there's no precedent.
Cases saying where QI applies, like the pepper spray case, exist because nobody knew beforehand if it applied to the use of pepper spray. And if you read the case, it was the policy of that police force to use pepper spray. Thus, the question boiled down to whether it was reasonable the officer to use pepper spray in that situation. The police force is the proper defendant in that case, not the individual officer.
Which is likely how Gauvin will walk, since despite killing person being illegal, there are no suitable court precedents ruling with sufficient specificity that a government agent killing a person is illegal
That's both ridiculous, wrong, and clearly FUD. Within the past year several cops have been found guilty of murder or homicide for the illegal use of force resulting in the death of someone. It's very likely that Gauvin will plead guilty to avoid a trial and secure a reduced sentence, because if he risks a trial he would be sentenced to life in prison if he's found guilty. (To walk, he'd need to convince 12 people that he isn't guilty; a hung jury would just result in a re-trial.)
How many of your tax dollars are you willing to pour into addressing the volume of nuisance cases then?
But why shouldn't all people be protected from nuisance suits over reasonable mistakes?
Here I can’t sue mr Amash if I disagree with his bill, but I can sue him as a private citizen if he violates my civil rights as a person.
In the case of Federal Legislators, their immunity is written into the constitution explicitly.
No such explicit provision exists for government employees.
Probably depends on exactly where you are, but in the US the "LL" in "LLC" is "Limited Liability". (The same concept applies for a C-corp, and Europe has equivalent constructs AFAIK.)
One of the main selling points of a corporation is limited liability. If you are acting on behalf of the company you are very explicitly not "jointly" or in any other way liable for its actions. There are very specific things you have to do wrong to become individually liable; this is called "piercing the veil":
https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/personal-liability-p...
Issuing or denying a permit could easily have millions of dollars of impact. Nobody in their right mind would agree to take that kind of personal responsibility without a proportionally high profit.
If a cable tech steals something from your house, is the cable company liable, or the cable tech?
Edit: a similar doctrine should (but doesn't) apply to decisionmakers at large corporations. If the CEO is told repeatedly about a safety failure and refuses to take action, it's ridiculous to me that the CEO isn't personally liable for any damage or injury caused as a result.
The problem is this whole qualified immunity is a civil thing. Workplace safety negligence, theft, police violence all are criminal cases. But. After the the prosecutors (DAs) stopped charging police officers people started suing them in civil court.
The problem is not QI per se, the problem is _wtf_ is going on with cops killing anybody in non-violent cases. (And how come there's not a public inquiry when someone dies in law enforcement custody or during any interaction with police. And how come nothing has really changed over the years - except police got the old tanks from the post-9/11 war-on-terror spending spree.)
QI protects government employees from retaliation for decisions made as part of their job, that are necessary for them to complete their job. Police unions and sociopaths with badges and law degrees have bastardized this to try to use it to protect police officers for murdering people.
Under the centuries-old principle of sovereign immunity, the government can simply choose not to be liable for anything at all. Sovereign immunity is the default for most countries now, and throughout history.
The US and the countries of the EU are relatively unique in allowing themselves to be sued for damages for their failures.
An example might be Good Samaritan laws. Such laws are intended to reduce bystanders' hesitation to assist in CPR, for fear of being sued or prosecuted for unintentional injury or wrongful death.
The problem here however, is the obvious and rampant abuse of QI...
So if I grab someone off the street and handcuff them we can be almost 100% sure I'm committing a crime. If the police do the same thing we can be almost 100% sure they are not committing a crime.
Exceptions happen in both cases but it's not unreasonable (which isn't to say it's correct) to take make laws that take that into account.
See: https://www.cato.org/blog/qualified-immunity-supreme-courts-...
The original laws of this country did not permit lawsuits against government employees acting in an official capacity. After the Civil War, the Civil Right Act of 1871 was passed allowing citizens and residents to sue government officials for civil rights violations suffered under color of law. The qualified immunity doctrine was created by the courts after that to shield public officials from nuisance suits for discretionary actions (generally meaning bureaucratic actions) by people angry over actions that went against them (i.e., for denials of licenses, judgments, etc.).
Unfortunately, due to the volume of nuisance suits, this doctrine got stronger and stronger over time. At some point, the courts began applying this strengthened doctrine intended for bureaucratic actions to police actions.