The Qualified Immunity Accountability Act would eliminate qualified immunity protections for law enforcement officers in civil rights lawsuits. Currently, police officers can claim immunity from lawsuits if they argue that the constitutional rights they violated were not "clearly established" at the time of their actions, or if they acted in good faith. This bill removes those defenses for local police officers and federal law enforcement officers, making it easier for victims to sue officers directly for constitutional violations. The bill also amends federal criminal law to lower the standard for prosecuting deaths caused by rights deprivations from "willfully" to "knowingly or recklessly," and clarifies that an officer's act counts as causing death if it was a substantial contributing factor. No specific funding or implementation timeline is included in the legislation.
Take Action
Your position
Add a comment
to comment on this bill.
Annotate the text
Highlight any passage on the Summary or Full Text tab to attach a note. Annotations appear on the Annotations tab.