Can you link to some of these cases of cops losing qualified immunity? It's an area in interested in but I understand that to be a vanishingly rare outcome - like only in very egregious cases, not just for run of the mill rights violations.
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A federal court denies qualified immunity when an officer’s conduct violates a clearly established constitutional right or when material facts remain heavily disputed for a jury. While appellate and district courts routinely evaluate these claims, absolute lists contain thousands of entries because denials typically happen at the lower or circuit court levels rather than as sweeping national precedent.[0]
Notable Federal and Supreme Court Cases Denying Immunity
Taylor v. Riojas (2020): The U.S. Supreme Court summarily reversed a lower court and denied qualified immunity to correctional officers who housed an inmate in shockingly filthy, human-waste-packed cells for days, ruling that the extreme conditions-violating the Eighth Amendment-needed no prior identical precedent.[1]
King v. Brownback (Sixth Circuit): The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied qualified immunity to members of a joint law enforcement task force after they aggressively tackled and beat an innocent man (James King) outside a convenience store when they mistook him for a suspect.[2]
Schroeder v. City of Des Moines (2022): The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that three police officers were not entitled to qualified immunity after conducting an unlawful, suspicionless car stop and subsequent arrest based on an unverified temporary license plate.[3]
Glover v. City of Jackson (2024): A federal district court famously rejected a detective’s qualified immunity defense in a major civil rights action involving fabricated evidence and malicious prosecution, highlighting systemic flaws in the doctrine itself.[4]
[0] - https://ij.org/press-release/massive-new-study-reveals-that-...
[1] - https://leb.fbi.gov/articles/featured-articles/qualified-imm...
[2] - https://ij.org/case/king-v-brownback/
[3] - https://iowaappeals.com/uncategorized/three-des-moines-polic...
[4] - https://eji.org/news/federal-court-denies-qualified-immunity...
I am not familiar with the case, but from my reading IJ is still trying to fight the immunity.
> Instead, the high court asked the Sixth Circuit to decide the issue first. Rather than seriously engaging with the issue, as the Supreme Court asked, the Sixth Circuit unthinkingly applied outdated caselaw, becoming the sixth federal appeals court to do so. Now, IJ is asking the Supreme Court to weigh in and deny the government one of its many tools to avoid the Constitution