AmericansAgainstQI

It's legalized theft by the government. Get rid of it. Yesterday.

- Patrick "Civil Forfeiture Is Theft" Jaicomo

We are suing! Prosecutorial and judicial immunity are two of the additional doctrines that we are fighting in addition to qualified immunity and (absolute) federal immunity. See, e.g.:

• IJ suing a prosecutor who was moonlighting as a law clerk in his own cases.
• Filing an amicus in a case where a judge jailed some kids for not wanting to follow his custody decisions.

We also have several other prosecutorial and judicial immunity cases in the hopper that we will announce soon.

- Patrick "No One Is Above The Law" Jaicomo

On the ATF (and all other federal agencies) and government overstepping, the Supreme Court has created an absolute doctrine of federal immunity. Anya Bidwell and I went deep on this issue in a recent law review article called "Unqualified Immunity." Thanks to the Supreme Court's recent decision in Egbert v. Boule, almost all federal officials are operating in a Constitution-free-zone because the Court has said they simply cannot be sued.

This issue of federal immunity is, in my opinion, just as important as qualified immunity. And that is especially true because the use of state-federal task forces has proliferated across the country. (Wherever you live in the U.S., there is a task force or two or seven like this.) And Courts are granting their members - even the state and local ones - federal immunity even if they have been denied qualified immunity. IJ is litigating this issue right now.

- Patrick "A Federal Badge Is Not a Shield From the Constitution" Jaicomo

Oh definitely! For instance:

• Some circuits (like the 10th) will not reach the constitutional merits of a claim by default. Others (like the 5th) will. That means that more or less clearly established law is being established in one circuit than another.
• Some circuits (like the 5th) will actually deny qualified immunity in "obvious" cases. See Villarreal v. Laredo. Some circuits (like the 6th) will rely on the most picayune distinctions to grant qualified immunity. See Novak v. Parma.
• Some circuits (like the 8th) will grant qualified immunity to officials who are acting outside of their job duties. Some circuits (like the 11th) will deny qualified immunity unless the official can show he had the authority to do what he was doing.

There are many others, and it gets really complicated, really quickly.

We are filing cert on the last two issues. Our case CSI v. Large is currently pending, and Novak is to-be-filed.

- Patrick "The Circuits Are Split" Jaicomo

Short Circuit rules! Everyone should subscribe to the newsletter AND the podcast!

It's really hard to predict these kinds of things, but if I had to . . . I would say qualified immunity. There are a ton of critics of QI from across the ideological spectrum (e.g., Justices Thomas and Sotomayor). Plus, it has been under a much more aggressive assault for the past decade or so. If you want to get really nerdy, Anya and I recently wrote a whole law review article about why we're optimistic about ending (or at least seriously diminishing) QI.

Immunity for judges and prosecutors is in a more guarded position -- more so for judges than prosecutors. And very few people have taken those on. (We currently are because both are unjustifiable.) So, I think it will take longer to chip away at those.

- Patrick "The Constitution Is Supreme Law" Jaicomo