SCOTUS rules you may sue government agents for damages when they violate rights
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Do not rejoice too soon. If the law gave immunity to officials in their personal capacity, they might have equally ruled that you cannot sue them personally under the law. The court is making no principled or difficult stand for any kind of civil rights here, hence you may note the unanimous opinion.
More and more things are falling to the courts to decide because Congress is paralyzed for some reason having to do with the new atmosphere of microsecond attention span and single-issue voting. I think we would be wrong to place so much hope in the courts, and rather try to fix what is broken with our system of creating and updating laws.
The actual legislature, as you note, is where these fixes need to occur. Using the courts for it is a civics hack, and one that will bite us in the ass.
Seems like that's very hard to square with Citizens or Shelby County, both of which overturned quite clearly written laws with long-accepted interpretations.
The textualism stuff is, at best, an excuse used when the court wants to do nothing. It doesn't limit the court when it wants to make changes. In this case, the court took as narrow a step as possible into the minefield that leads to Qualified Immunity. It's a baby step in the right direction, but it's just a baby step.
In this case, they held the way they did because they did not want to write a broad finding, and absolutely not because their hands were bound by some imaginary principle.
Now.
(Reposting a comment I made elsewhere)
Before Citizens United, any US majority-owned corporation or union was allowed to make political contributions from a segregated fund. The money in that fund could only come from employees and shareholders. This was, in decades of previous legislation and case law, considered sufficient to protect the 1st Amendment interests of associations of individuals. They can pool their money together for political purposes, put they can't pool it with other people's money.
Before the ruling, Citizens United was allowed to spend money on political activity. They were allowed to spend money on political activity close to an election. They were allowed to spend money, close to an election, to broadcast issue-based political advertisement (e.g., for or against a ballot initiative) on TV. They were allowed to spend money distributing their documentary in any way other than broadcasting it on TV. They could show it in theaters. They could put it on the internet. They could print DVDs and mail them out. They could distribute it to PACs and campaigns for them to spend their own money distributing it, including broadcasting by on TV. They could pay money, close to an election, from a segregated fund, to broadcast their documentary on TV. All they weren't allowed to do was spend money, close to an election, on broadcasting something expressing views for or against a political candidate, on television or radio, to an audience of at least 50,000, close to the election.
Corporations were not banned from electioneering before Citizens United. They were restricted. The laws imposing those restrictions went back until at least the early 1900s. There was a century of case law find some such restrictions constitutional. There was a decision in 2003, just 7 years before Citizens United, upholding the very restrictions that CU struck down. The majority's argument rested on the idea that no "identity-based" restrictions on 1st-Amendment rights are constitutional. But there are such restrictions, e.g. against prisoners, students, and employees of the executive branch. These restrictions remain in place today. The majority invented a 1st-Amendment principle and then selectively applied it to corporations. They did so with no fact-finding in the record of the case on whether the provisions they struck down actually chilled free speech. Fact-finding that the government wanted to do before Citizens United (the organization) dropped the issue.
The majority in Citizens United flipped the table on decades of election law that had survived scrutiny several times before without even claiming that any circumstances had changed. They did it solely because they didn't like the outcome. And they bent over backwards to do it.
My point was simply the wording above: the court CHOSE to issue a very broad decision in Citizen's, just as it chose NOT to issue one here. And the reason is just simple desire and not any kind of principle. The court wanted to, and that's as far as it goes. You see the same skew in logic in arguments about Roe, where the same people (like you) who think Citizen's is fine for throwing out huge regulatory areas based on a novel reading of the constitution suddenly think it's "judicial activism" to find a right to medical privacy in the due process clause.
“It was a (very) novel interpretation of the constitution (both the extension of corporate personhood and the notion of money-as-speech were completely new tricks) that allowed it.”
There is an enormous volume of prior case law that says the same thing.
Regardless, the Citizen's United decision was actually pretty clearly pro-free speech, and abuses by companies may well be cleaned up as time goes on and more cases reach the Supreme Court (or so said Scalia when I asked him, honestly it did sound like he was a little embarrassed about how his opinion turned out)
When you asked him about it? That piqued my interest, what was the context? Why'd he seem embarrassed? The name drop begs for more details :)
Sincerely curious: do you have examples?
Scalia's a controversial justice, to say the least, for a variety of reasons, but I don't quite understand this criticism. (I do understand not liking his jurisprudence or his abrasive style.) He and Justice Ginsburg, for example, were famous friends while holding opposite opinions about how to interpret and read the U.S. Constitution; one would think she would've called him out on blatant dishonesty (intellectual or otherwise)
That seems...implausible:
Section 1
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Section 2
The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
> they managed to hire the only living writer of the amendment as their lawyer. Given that it was written under secrecy, his word was all anyone had to go on.
The Court (and courts in general) don't tend to look to authorial intent as the original intent that matters, but legislative intent (the intent of the body/(-ies) adopting the provision.) So, the word of the “only living author” wouldn’t be the only thing anyone had to go on; they’d have the records of legislative debates. And an authorial position (even if well-documwnted) that wasn't actively considered in legislative debate would probably not be considered to have much weight.
No they weren't. Money as speech, for instance, was a bedrock of earlier campaign finance decisions stretching back at least to Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976).
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/424/1/#tab-opini...
I'm a Brit so have not particular standing in this. If I were a US citizen I would deplore the Citizen's United decision, but not on the grounds of corporate personhood (which as I understand it was never mentioned in the ruling), but rather on the grounds that religious freedom should not grant special rights and privileges not available otherwise. It should be a freedom of belief, not a freedom of action.
Also, why are Supreme Court opinions literally called opinions, if they are apparently objective?
So I'm not sure what your point is.
> What’s the difference between a court opining that a law is unconstitutional and a court interpreting a law as unconstitutional?
That question was a reply to this comment:
> Citizens United was based on the law being unconstitutional, not the court’s interpretation of the law.
That comment is referring to two different things SCOTUS can do:
1. Throw out a law because it is unconstitutional.
2. Interpret the law by deciding how it applies in a particular case.
They're saying the Citizens United ruling was of the first type, not the second.
You seemed to miss that, so I was trying to clarify it. That's all.
I did not miss that. I was responding to it. Perhaps you are not understanding what I am saying.
How did they determine CU was of the first type? Did they interpret it to be of the first type, or is there an objective view of it that simply makes it so? And if the latter, where is this objective view located that all can see? And why did 4 of the 5 justices not have access to see the objective view?
In other words: deciding something is unconstitutional and interpreting something as unconstitutional are exactly the same thing. There is no such thing as unconstitutional outside of interpretation.
You read:
> Citizens United was based on the law being [objectively] unconstitutional, not the court’s interpretation of the law [being that it is an unconstitutional one].
I read:
> Citizens United was based on the law being unconstitutional [in the opinion of the court], not the court’s interpretation of [how] the [constitutionally-compatible and therefore still on the books] law [should be applied to Citizens United].
In any case, your read is that the court had an opinion about the constitutionality of CU (which is exactly what it had). And my read is exactly the same: opinion = interpretation.
The supreme court doesn't make a law unconstitutional. It already was or wasn't. They provide notice to the system that the law will now be seen as unconstitutional or not.
If they get it wrong (lets say we know because another SC overrules them in the future) it doesn't change the constitutionality of the law, just whether it's enforceable or not during those periods.
No. If the Supreme Court is asked whether a law is constitutional or not, they form an opinion on whether it is or is not. The law exists as law up until the moment the Supreme Court is asked and interprets it one way or the other. It does not exist as one or the other until that moment, even though it is the law, and after that moment it only exists as one or the other based upon the majority opinion of 9 people. Laws are not discovered to be constitutional or unconstitutional, because interpretations are not discovered, they are formed.
>A law can be so blatantly and obviously unconstitutional that everyone can see it and refuses to arrest or charge people for breaking it.
That doesn't make the law unconstitutional. It just makes it a bad law. Bad laws can also be constitutional.
Yes, every individual judge has their own skills and opinions and as such, sees the legal question slightly differently, and has different legal interests and thus knows some law more than other. We have a nine as a balance between not having enough diverse backgrounds such that we might be missing the critical input some day weighed against the group being to big to be convenient.
> why do we end up with split votes that so often fall down partisan lines?
People are flawed. Let's say some injustice caused you to get into law. You're likely going to be more familiar with that area, and more sensitive to its harms, than another judge. You may not be voting your ideology, you may be there (as a justice) because of your ideology, and you may have your honest beliefs because of your unique experiences.
I often read opinions I don't agree with, but I can see where the justice just had a different life than me and sees things differently.
> Supreme Court opinions literally called opinions, if they are apparently objective?
The only use of objectivity in this thread is yours. But if someone did use that phrasing, they'd mean that the justices should decide the same on the same issue, no matter if it helps a nazi or a nun. Justice is supposed to be blind.
Sure. But it's not random flaws. Liberal people are flawed to believe rules are written as a liberal would interpret them. And conservatives just the opposite. Because the rules do not exist outside of subjective interpretation.
I may be the only person using the word objective in this conversation, but that doesn't mean everyone else in the conversation is not building their arguments on the existence of objectivity in regards to a judges interpretations.
>I often read opinions I don't agree with, but I can see where the justice just had a different life than me and sees things differently.
That's right. Their opinion is nothing more than their interpretation. A couple of people had the opinion that something was unconstitutional. That doesn't mean it is, just that they believe it is.
Justice is supposed to be blind. And the Supreme Court opinion that CU was unconstitutional helps corporations just as it helps pro-choice non-profits just as it helps pro-life non-profits. But at the end of the day, it was 5 people who interpreted it as unconstitutional. They did not make the discovery that it is unconstitutional.
It’s not quite that pure. If there are self-contradictions in the constitution, then that gives them some choice about what to compare the law to. They ought to balance that appropriately, but their biases surely creep in.
You might want to mask "discover the truth" with "finding a provision", but the Supreme Court does not "find provisions that conflict with other provisions", they interpret things to form opinions. In this case 5 of them interpreted a provision to be in conflict with the way they interpreted a provision of the constitution. 4 of them did not share either or both of those interpretations.
Here, the argument isn’t about the constitution. It’s about what “appropriate relief” means in the statute.
Sometimes it is just thrown out to cover bias, but that's not its fault.
You may be right or you may be wrong, anyone can do it, and anyone who does will mostly come to their conclusion based upon their personal political beliefs. Hence, a reason the Supreme Court has so many partisan split rulings.
Textualism is pure nonsense, used to present a false sense of rationality to an opinion. Any self-proclaimed textualist is either deceiving themselves or attempting to deceive others.
No. You're just saying that people have biases and thus everything is a lie.
Textualism is a thing, and exists outside of law. Textualists think that the authors specific words are important. "Why did Tolkien say X? It must matter, he's a careful author."
I value it in the field of law because legal disputes caused by textual confusion can be avoided through careful writing and textualism leads to the type of thinking that is capable of that. And if nobody cared about the words, how sloppy would the thinking also be?
Everything should be. But 95% of everything is really people decrying textualism and actively choosing their ideology.
> it's nonsense used by people to make themselves think they are smart
What nonsense did you use?
Of course the textualist thinks only he is above ideology. This is how you can tell they're clowns.
Is your rudeness caused by a disability?
There's a huge grey area there. Both require the court to insert its judgement instead of that of elected officials making the law. Whether or not they are ruling on "what the law should be" is not a binary determination and different people draw the line in different places. Every judicial act at that level is one of interpretation, and that will always necessarily carry the risk of an interpretation that is not in keeping with the legislative intent. In which case the remedy is additional legislation to clarify that intent.
In this example, should Congress decide monetary damages should not be in the scope of "appropriate relief", they can change the law. Right now there are undoubted some-- the DOJ who fought this issue for example-- who believe the court just "decided what the law should be." That's probably in the nature of most decisions the court makes-- the losing side will thing the court got it wrong.
That’s just, like, your opinion man.
What is the law? A bunch of words. What do those words mean in combination the the surrounding words? Uh oh, we just hit subjectivity.
“Originalism”, “Textualism”, “Absurdism”, etc. are all pure nonsense. Judges, and most particularly Supreme Court judges are definitively expressing their unique opinions as to what a law is, which is identical to “what a law should be”. Someone could attempt to argue that a judge’s opinion of what a law is may not align with what that judge actually believes it should be, but the evidence of consistent partisan split votes makes such an argument particularly weak.
There are a number of judges who 'break the mold' by taking 'unconventional' positions in certain cases. Gorsuch, and Scalia before him are known as a criminal defendant's beset friend when it comes to evidentiary rules, even though nobody would say they were 'soft on crime'. On the other hand, there are judges and justices like Alito, Breyer, and Sotomayor who always find a way to decide cases in favor of their preferred litigant.
Well there are canons of interpretation, each of which describes how one can read and understand what legislation and law mean. You seem to be dismissing the canons as being incorrect, and I'm not exactly sure why.
Do you think it is possible to interpret a law faithfully? What about a contract?
Except there isn't much of this evidence. Supposedly "right wing" justices vote with the "left wing" justices regularly, even often against the other "right wing" justices.
Gorsuch, on the other hand, will hold with a death grip to what he believes the intent of the writer of the law/Constitution was, rather to some desired outcome.
Textualist value the 'system' over immediate outcome, because they really believe they are there to call 'balls and strikes,' hewing as close to the 'rules of the game' as possible.
Someone like Roberts takes the whole enchilada into account- precedent, public reaction, political impact, historical judgement, interactions between the justices themselves, but coming from a conservative PoV, I assume because he thinks thats part of his job as Chief Justice.
I, personally, prefer the textualist approach. It allows the separation of powers to mean something and makes the law at least theoretically responsive to the people via their elected representatives. If the majority wants the law to change, they have the means to do so without waiting for a new set of justices.
Those who want to bypass that by hoping their 'team' stack's the deck- well that only works for non-textualists. Trump is finding out, to his intense disappointment, that all those textualists he nominated to the bench, care not a whit for getting things done for him, but just what the law is, as it is written. So the left should be mighty pleased that the 'other side' doesn't play the game by their rules, and that in this area, at the least, they may want to change their approach.
Also, qualified immunity applies to "discretionary" functions performed by government officials, but "discretionary" doesn't mean "whatever the official thinks is ok". It means a function in which the applicable laws and regulations do not dictate exactly what the government official is to do, but leave some scope within which the official has the discretion to choose a specific action. So whether qualified immunity would protect an FBI agent who put someone on the No Fly list would depend on why they did it and whether the applicable laws and regulations allowed them the discretion to do it for that reason. I doubt the applicable laws and regulations allow FBI agents the discretion to put someone on the No Fly list simply because they refused to be a government informant.
It is absolutely necessary for the courts to decide that the legislature can't give federal agents immunity to violate civil rights. Rebalancing constitutional rights toward the federal government is not a right of congress.
(Congress could only write laws agreeing with this conclussion or they would fail in the supreme court.)
I feel like this is a useful prioritization mechanic within the structure of government.
It’s good that it stalls in that condition, IMO. I’d expect unaligned moves in Congress to cause social strife.
Can we remedy things at a lower level before we push a fix through and apply it to half the country that doesn’t want it?
I'd blame First Past the Post voting. [1] It's mathematically always going to lead to a stagnant two party system.
When people are forced to vote against someone they don't want in office, representatives have no incentive to be anything other than "not #otherside".
There is also no longer a reason to have voting in primaries at different times for different states. Having it setup this way means the results are influenced by various special interests (and not just through the media).
[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo
Sorry if this comment was to political in nature for HN.
Multi party coalitions don’t line up this way when considering individual issues, which is the problem we’re discussing here: the paralysis of the US Congress.
Imagine if the Libertarian Party, the Ds, and the Rs each held a third of Congress. On things like finance and gun laws, the Ls would vote with the Rs. But on things like abortion and drug laws, the Ls would vote with the Ds.
The meaningful representation of a single third party thus already throws a wrench in the “conservative vs liberal” ideology. “Us versus them” might still exist, sure, but it shifts per issue instead of being a polarized dichotomy. It’s a step in the right direction.
- People's desire to have a defined in and out group would prevent any party that changes coalition by issue from ever existing in the first place
- Even if such a party came about, shifts in the local overton window (if that's not an oxymoron) of the Rs or the Ds would push the newly formed Ls away until they wound up effectively a part of the other. They wouldn't even give an advantage to the party they wound up with, they'd just compete for the same naturally occurring 50% of people.
On the other hand, I'm in kind of a leftist bubble. I find our typical factiousness endearing most of the time, but it probably skews my view.
The number of dollars spent on federal elections is starting to approach the magnitude of the revenue other large industries (such as cars or movies). So the effect of money in US politics cannot be understated.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/28/us/politics/2020-race-mon...
According to the law, none of his rights were violated. He can't recoup the thousands of dollars he had to pay after having his car destroyed by cops, either.
Is that his lawyers opinion or theirs? Would this ruling change that?
I doubt this ruling will change anything, because his rights weren't violated according to the law. I shared it because cops can do a lot of damage based off of a hunch, and there isn't much you can do about it if they don't blatantly violate your rights while doing so.
Most department have a clerk that specifically handles these types of claims.
Unless there is a bunch of other details around the arrest, would probably be worth the time to file a claim.
https://www.cato.org/blog/may-15th-supreme-court-will-finall...
I wonder if this ruling does not have an impact on qualified immunity as a sustainable doctrine. In this ruling, SCOTUS has recognized a claim against law enforcement for rights violations not by finding a matching precedent but by reasoning from (recent) positive law.
I highly recommend sending some of your charitable giving to IJ this year.
If we apply your statement are you saying corporations have zero constitutional protections? The state could seize their assets without compensation? Enter a company’s property to search it at any time and without a warrant?
That makes no sense to me, but that’s the kind of world we live in.
So relax. Corporations don’t need your apologetics—they’re doing just fine.
In any event, it’s a relatively rare phenomenon, and if you find yourself in trouble with the law, follow the ACLU’s advice regarding your rights, and don’t skimp on a criminal lawyer.
Besides, the government doesn’t have the time or resources to criminally prosecute most minor violations of the law. If you end up in a position where you need a criminal lawyer, it’s rather likely you did something really foolish to attract enforcement attention.
And if you can’t afford an attorney, you can always take your chances with a public defender. But I wouldn’t recommend it.
An unfortunate reality is that US law enforcement tends to be selective in its enforcement and prosecution based on geography and class. A college student may get a slap on the wrist(expulsion) for a drug offense while a street kid goes to jail.
And the vast majority of prisoners aren’t being convicted and sentenced due to parallel construction or other such trickery. In most cases, they’re the result of a garden-variety guilty plea, often to crimes of lesser severity or magnitude than the original charges.
I'm more worried about the cost of defending myself from crimes I didn't commit than the cost of defending myself from crimes I did commit...
And I’m not justifying the police’s behavior, mind you. Total miscarriage of justice and abuse of power.
Also, [0]
http://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/NRE.G...
Case in point: the very document you posted says, “The proportion among adult sexual assault exonerations is particularly low, 4%. Perhaps avoiding the stigma of a sex-crime conviction is so important that few innocent rape defendants plead guilty...”
Are innocent people imprisoned? Yes, that happens and that is terrible. I don’t think any right minded individual wants that. But as the document itself pointed out, most innocent prisoners plead guilty. If they had good defense counsel (which they almost certainly didn’t) and they were in fact innocent, then they would not have been advised to plead guilty. The document itself says that most innocent prisoners plead guilty to avoid pretrial detention, which no competent criminal defense lawyer would recommend.
The existence of exceptions to a general observation doesn’t mean the general observation is invalid, just like the existence of cosmic rays screwing up a computational answer doesn’t make the general design of a CPU a doorstop.
> If you end up in a position where you need a criminal lawyer, it’s rather likely you did something really foolish to attract enforcement attention. And if you can’t afford an attorney, you can always take your chances with a public defender. But I wouldn’t recommend it.
> If you think the punishments the US imposes are severe, that’s an even greater incentive not to commit crimes you can’t afford to defend yourself against.
Those come across to my eyes as “you’re the idiot who got yourself here, shoulda thought of consequences sooner.” But given
1) unequal policing that targets the poor,
2) police corruption that goes uncorrected,
3) overworked therefore often inadequate public defenders,
4) the practice of throwing the book at anyone who dares go to trial among other ways of coercing a plea deal,
it is way too easy to be innocent and poor, with your only real options being “plead guilty for 3-5 years” or “go to trial with the deck severely stacked against you and risk 30+ years.” With 95% of cases pleading out, there’s simply no way that innocents caught in the system are anywhere near “cosmic ray” levels of rare. Which brings us back to this statement from ‘harimau777 way upthread:
> A system where you are only protected if you pay isn't justice, it's a protection racket.
You disagreed with the second half of that statement, and that’s fair. Maybe a better way to state the main sentiment there is: A system where you are not protected unless you can pay isn’t justice.
If that's happening, it's likely due to incompetent people in power as officers, judges, and prosecutors (my experiences). And it will continue to happen.
US courts don't follow US constitution literally, and take freedom doing a lot of "interpretation."
My law professor in Canada, who once was a US citizen, and a practicing lawyer in US said:
— US constitution is fairly good at protecting what's written in it, for it being near nothing.
His favourite poke at the US legal system was an example how either Texan, or Kentuckian court managed to establish how "A woman is not legally a person" in a way that did not directly contradict any US law, precedent, or article of constitution. And that happened as recently as sixties, if not seventies.
AFAICT the airlines wanted all of that bullshit legislation to indemnify themselves from the damages caused by terrorism. Technically you might be able to create your own airline (and airports) that rejected all of the groping theater, etc. And perhaps after decades of fighting in court you'd win the right for your companies to not have their freedom hampered in such a manner. But none of that is economically prudent, so we're stuck with the blatantly anticonstitutional regulations.
So, IMHO one answer to your question is we can engage in activism to motivate our government to change our laws and regulations to prevent a repeat of the violation in question, and vote for representatives who also would support such things.
Like, once you find a bug in production, you fix it, and ideally then do an analysis of how it got there and what practices might be worth changing and maybe you also write a test in case someone slips up in the future.
I see and understand your perspective. You're right, "government" does do things that, prospectively, contemporaneously and/or retrospectively are inappropriate, unfair and/or just plain bad/stupid.
That said, at least in the United States, "government" isn't some foreign agency or third party. Government is us. All of us, through those we select as representatives in our town, county, state and federal governments.
We can (and, in my estimation, should) do better. But I believe it's incorrect to place blame on some nebulous "government", as if it's not us Americans.
A good way to start "doing better" would be to remove the perverse incentives that make money the primary currency of our political system.
Independent, non-partisan creation of local/state/federal election districts is a good idea too.
That's a huge problem. For example[0], in the 2018 elections, 53% of Wisconsinites voted for Democratic state (assembly and senate) candidates, but those candidates only won 36% of seats in those bodies.
That's just one example. I'm not singling out any particular party, there certainly are states with Democratic majorities that have created district maps that favor their candidates too.
In any case, I agree with OP, but just wanted to point out that, at least in the US (and many other places too), we are the government, not downtrodden serfs crushed under the heel of some other group.
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/12/04/several-l...
Edit: Fixed typographical error and redundant wording.
For that reason, I don't think that the government really represents us in any meaningful way.
>For that reason, I don't think that the government really represents us in any meaningful way.
There are lots of ways to "fix" the system. Currently 21 states have non-partisan or bi-partisan redistricting regimes[0], so it's certainly possible to do so, either via a state ballot measure[1] (26 states have those) or a legislative process.
Obviously, states without ballot measures are a hard sell, especially in state legislatures that have strong majorities of one of the major parties.
But like I said, "the government is us." And that means voting, and not just in presidential election years -- since elections are regulated on the state and county levels.
Which means two things:
1. Your vote in local/state elections not only gives your vote more weight, it's also easier to change both our representatives and the laws they pass than in Federal elections;
2. A smaller electorate (for mayor, county executive, state assemblyperson/senator) that not only votes, but makes their opinions and ideas clear as to the sort of government they favor can have a strong impact on how elections (including Federal elections and redistricting) are planned and executed in their state.
That voter turnout for general elections in presidential election years is usually around 55-60%[2] (although this year was a bit higher), but primary turnout is generally significantly lower.
In non-presidential election years, turnout is generally much lower, even though local and state elections generally have a much bigger effect on governance in states and localities.
As such, if you want change in your government, it's easier than you think because state and local elections are the ones where most of the change we need would come.
What's more, most people would agree that fairer redistricting and a smaller but still huge number would agree that reducing the influence of money in elections (via public funding, shortening the time for campaigns, etc.) are important to the health of our political system and (small 'd') democracy.
If you just throw up your hands and say why bother? "I don't think that the government really represents us in any meaningful way," you're not making things better -- by not voting or advocating for positive change, you're implicitly endorsing the status quo.
If you aren't clear as to how that could work, here are a few resources:
"Take Back Your Government" by Robert Heinlein
http://www.baen.com/Chapters/0671721577/0671721577.htm
Learn about Ranked Choice Voting. A dozen states and localities have/are about to implement it. It can give more voices a real chance and help to break the stranglehold of the two major parties:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_voting
https://ballotpedia.org/Ranked-choice_voting_(RCV)
https://www.fairvote.org/ranked_choice_voting
Advocate/vote for public funding of elections: 14 states have already adopted this in some form, and we need more of it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publicly_funded_elections#In_t...
https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/public...
Most of all, get out there and vote! The government is us and reflects the desires and preferences of those who vote.
Not just every four years, not just in general elections. Every. Single. Election. Every. Single. Time.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redistricting_commission
[1] https://ballotpedia.org/States_with_initiative_or_referendum
Which, to be clear, is a GOOD thing. We live in a democracy, and the tax payer is ultimately responsible and should be punished in some small way. We don't have to shut off our brains when someone up for election preaches about "law and order"/"think of the children" and accuse opponents of being "weak on crime". Everything from over criminalization to qualified immunity could be wiped with the stroke of a pen if our representatives at the federal and state levels acted. That that hasn't happened is ultimately our fault. The very least we can do is pay damages when the result hurts people.
Yes there should be more individual accountability too, but power always should go with some level of responsibility. Tax payers have power as well. It's very irritating to see people separating themselves from all that and acting so passive. Democracy isn't a spectator sport.
It’s unwise to open that door to personal liability, as there are many liability risks that even a low level official faces, even when their conduct is correct. Frankly, you’d need to be an idiot to have anything to do with HR or procurement working in any government subdivision with personal liabilty.
I don't generally agree with capping damages. This could prevent real damages from being reimbursed. Capping intangibles could be ok though.
That doesn't make any sense to call a cap, you're basically saying "the awarded damages are not to exceed $N except for in cases where they are ruled to exceed $N."
> (a) RFRA’s text provides that persons may sue and “obtain appro-priate relief against a government,” 42 U. S. C. §2000bb–1(c), includ-ing an “official (or other person acting under color of law) of the United States,” §2000bb–2(1). [1]
[1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/19-71_qol1.pdf
Not quite. It's saying that Congress has the authority to make a law that allows you to sue government agents, in their personal capacities, if they violate your rights in particular ways. In this particular case, Congress had passed such a law that applied to the rights violation in the case.
I have no problem with the former, but I have a big problem with the latter, particularly as it's currently implemented.