Shouldn’t we all be able to carry out our lives without undue fear of personal liability or harassing litigation?
It makes no sense to provide a special civil liberty for government employees and no one else.
If we need to reign in law suits, then let’s do that for everyone.
The legal system is unfortunately set up such that there is a significant burden (time and cost) on defendants, even when cases are brought without merit.
In that way, the legal system can be "weaponized" and public employees can be influenced to act a certain way under the threat of a sea of PERSONAL lawsuits. ...something that seldom happens to individuals.
For that reason, immunity was created. I think we'll see a very sharp increase in lawsuits as a result of this change. ...and a lot of resignations. I wouldn't be a police officer if I didn't have immunity. At the very least, I would refuse to work shifts/neighborhoods with high crime.
You mean bouncers, train conductors, cabin crew members and hotel receptionists?
In sectors where private compete with public that's very difficult to understand why people should be regulated by different laws.
...which is generally how it works, though it's not as strongly codified as it is with qualified immunity.
If you're saying we should expand qualified immunity, I agree.
They aren’t, outside of government-agent immunities.
> ...which is generally how it works, though it's not as strongly codified as it is with qualified immunity
No, it is not how it works. The idnividual agent is generally personally liable, but the employer generally is often also liable for the torts of its agents under the principle of respondeat superior, or more directly if it also checks all the boxes for having committed a tort without considering that principle.
> INDEMNIFICATION BY PUBLIC BODY.--A judgment awarded pursuant to the New Mexico Civil Rights Act against a person acting on behalf of, under color of or within the course and scope of the authority of the public body shall be paid by the public body.
I agree that a lot of time the institution are liable (mostly for ordering people to achieve impossible target).
Victims currently have little or no recourse, so govt employees can run wild. Non-govt handles this by insurance (liability, error and ommission). Govt can and should do the same. Equal rights, or not?
Software developers don’t have this fear, so we get to kill people through releasing buggy bloated applications without any fear of personal liability.
We should. A software engineer was one of a handful of people sentenced in the Volkswagen emissions scandal.
People think there is an epidemic of police murdering minorities, but in reality the number of unarmed black men killed by police is somewhere between bear attacks and babies drowning in buckets in terms of annual deaths.
That's not to downplay the horror of such killings, but to put it into perspective of the pervasiveness of the problem. The media and especially social media of turned it into a full blown public health crisis.
You're comparing accidents to murder¹.
We can and should try to prevent deaths from bear attacks. But we should also have higher standards for human behavior than for bears.
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¹Or at best manslaughter