The_pantless_hero wrote:Neo Art wrote:Yes yes, I'm well aware of qualified immunity requirements
. It just, to me, seems...borderline. What is "clearly illegal" to you, or I, or Justices Stevens and Ginsburg may not necessarily be so to a non lawyer.
When did that become a protection from the law?
It is a bit complicated. The actions remain illegal. But individual government officials can be protected from liability by qualified immunity. Qualified immunity comses from an attempt to balance the need to protect the rights of citizens by imposition of damages against the need to protect officials who are merely trying to do their job in the public interest. Qualified immunity is an affirmative defense that must be pleaded by a defendant official. It requires a subjective good faith and an objective presumptive knowledge of and respect for basic constitutional rights. Thus, government officials performing discretionary functions are shieled from personal liability for damages "insofar as thier conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known." Here the issue is whether the contours of the rights violated were sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he/she is doing violates that right. Hopefully, that isn't too confusing.
Neo and I apparently disagree on whether the the rights of the student here were clearly established enough to impose liability on the school officials.
(Much of the above language is paraphrased from
Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800 (1982).