Thoughts on Qualified Immunity

There is a renewed push for ending qualified immunity especially since the unrest earlier this summer. Qualified immunity affords police officers protection from litigation for their actions in pursuit of the law, while immunity is lost if an officer violates a citizen’s constitutional rights. At least, that is what qualified immunity was before it metastasized into a near entitlement shield for officers and other public officials. Qualified immunity does not need to be abolished but it should definitely be qualified. It needs to be turned around to what it originally meant, not what decades of SCOTUS rulings has made it to be.