Re:Supreme Court rejects man’s bid to sue police over arrest...
by dragonwriter on Thursday February 23, 2023 @06:17PM
(#34918196)
> Could just be that QI is too big an issue to pick up over a case as marginal as this one.
A citizen suing police officers for a custodial arrest without due cause in retaliation for exercising Constitutionally-protected liberty is not a minor QI case, it is a major one; a minor QI case is something like the case that actually gave us QI, a prospective government contractor suing government officials in their personal capacity for abuse of discretion in dealing with the contract resulting in someone else winning the contract. (Pretty much all the QI cases that make the news these days are major cases, that is, ones involving law enforcement agents (often with the support, tacit or explicit, of their agency) using force, arrest, etc. against civilians, without legally sufficient cause, and often on the basis of race, gender identity, religion, or protected speech.
The allegations here are, on their face (though I’m not sure exactly what cause of action they were litigated under), a civil violation of the Ku Klux Klan Act as well as a criminal violation of Civil Rights Act of 1968. Honestly, I think the entire problem with QI would go away if it was clearly stated that charges under the “color of law” provision of the Ku Klux Klan Act, 42 USC Sec. 1983, were categorically outside of the scope of QI, and a sizable share of civil actions where that is an issue would themselves go away if the federal government enforced the criminal provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, 18 USC Sec. 241, more thoroughly.)
A citizen suing police officers for a custodial arrest without due cause in retaliation for exercising Constitutionally-protected liberty is not a minor QI case, it is a major one; a minor QI case is something like the case that actually gave us QI, a prospective government contractor suing government officials in their personal capacity for abuse of discretion in dealing with the contract resulting in someone else winning the contract. (Pretty much all the QI cases that make the news these days are major cases, that is, ones involving law enforcement agents (often with the support, tacit or explicit, of their agency) using force, arrest, etc. against civilians, without legally sufficient cause, and often on the basis of race, gender identity, religion, or protected speech.
The allegations here are, on their face (though I’m not sure exactly what cause of action they were litigated under), a civil violation of the Ku Klux Klan Act as well as a criminal violation of Civil Rights Act of 1968. Honestly, I think the entire problem with QI would go away if it was clearly stated that charges under the “color of law” provision of the Ku Klux Klan Act, 42 USC Sec. 1983, were categorically outside of the scope of QI, and a sizable share of civil actions where that is an issue would themselves go away if the federal government enforced the criminal provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, 18 USC Sec. 241, more thoroughly.)