The Supreme Court gives lawsuit immunity to Border Patrol agents who violate the Constitution

[In It to Win It]

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The Supreme Court handed down a decision on Wednesday which effectively gives Border Patrol agents who violate the Constitution total immunity from lawsuits seeking to hold them accountable.

Justice Clarence Thomas’s majority opinion in Egbert v. Boule, moreover, has implications that stretch far beyond the border. Egbert guts a seminal Supreme Court precedent, Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents (1971), which established that federal law enforcement officers who violate the Constitution may be individually sued — and potentially be required to compensate their victims for their illegal actions.

Egbert is a severe blow to the broader project of police accountability. While it does not target lawsuits against state law enforcement officers who violate the Constitution, it all but eliminates the public’s ability to sue Border Patrol officers — and possibly all federal officers — who commit similar violations.

In fairness, Egbert does indicate that people who believe their rights were violated by federal law enforcement may file a grievance with the law enforcement agency that employs the officer who allegedly violated the Constitution. But such grievances will be investigated by other law enforcement officers, and no court or other agency can review a law enforcement officer’s decision to exonerate a fellow officer.

And, perhaps most importantly, Egbert most likely shuts down a civil rights plaintiff’s ability to be compensated if their rights are violated.

Before Wednesday’s decision in Egbert, in other words, it was well-established that federal law enforcement officers who use unconstitutionally excessive force may be sued in federal court. Egbert explicitly exempts all Border Patrol agents from this rule, and it could be read to exempt nearly all — if not all — federal law enforcement officers from Bivens suits.

As Sotomayor notes in dissent, both Bivens and Egbert involved similar excessive force claims brought against law enforcement. And the holding of Bivens was that any “federal agent acting under color of his authority” may be sued if they violate the Fourth Amendment. But Egbert denies Boule’s Bivens claim, largely because Boule’s claim involves a Border Patrol agent, while Bivens involved a claim against officers from the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, an agency that ceased to exist in 1968.

Egbert, in other words, can plausibly be read to forbid all Fourth Amendment lawsuits against federal officers who do not work for the Federal Bureau of Narcotics — which no longer exists! At the very least, Egbert means that federal judges must go hunting for any possible reason to deny a Bivens suit.

[Baitball Blogger]

1. And they're putting more guns out on the streets

What could go wrong?

[TigressDem]

2. PROTECTING racist, violent extremist in the Border Patrol? Really Clarence? Ducked It Up Award

For FAILING in your duty as SCOTUS to rule on a case in a fashion that protects the civil liberties of people suffering abuse at the hands of Border Patrol Authorities, you are hereby awarded a "Ducked It Up" Award


You HAD a chance to behave like a caring, compassionate human being with functioning brain cells and instead you bowed to the GOD of your party and pardoned people who violently overstep their authority, because they are only dealing with immigrants, no one important.

You piece of dark and steamy crap.