The Institute for Justice is advocating for qualified immunity reforms in Texas to ensure that government officials are required to follow the U.S. Constitution and are held accountable if they violate someone's rights.
The Institute for Justice, a national public interest law center based in Arlington, Virginia, focuses on individual liberty in the areas of property rights, school choice, free speech and economic liberty. Arif Panju, managing attorney of the institute's Texas office, litigates constitutional cases in those four areas in both state and federal courts--from district courts to state supreme courts and all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
He told the Lone Star Standard that "IJ's project on immunity and accountability seeks to vindicate a simple but profound principle: If people must follow the law, then government must follow the Constitution."
Panju explained that “qualified immunity” is a special protection for government officials that the U.S. Supreme Court created in 1982 as an act of judicial policymaking.
"By default all government officials are immune from liability if they violate your rights. Whether your rights were actually violated doesn’t necessarily matter," he said. "Under qualified immunity, government officials can only be held accountable for violating someone’s rights if a court has previously ruled that it was 'clearly established' those precise actions were unconstitutional. If no such decision exists – or it exists, but just in another jurisdiction – the official is immune, even if the official intentionally violated the law."
The institute's Protecting Everyone's Constitutional Rights Act (PECRA), Panju said, is "state legislation that creates a cause-of-action to vindicate constitutional rights in state courts. It guarantees that if citizens must follow the law, then state and local government officials must follow the Constitution."
The institute is currently litigating two cases in which qualified immunity was invoked by government officials. One involves a veteran who was allegedly beaten by federal officers at a VA Hospital in El Paso, Texas. The man sued the officers and they invoked qualified immunity. A district court denied the officers' request but the Fifth Circuit Court reversed that decision. The Institute for Justice has filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the circuit court's decision.
Panju said that governments should be required to stand behind their employees' actions.
"If local or state government employees violate constitutional rights within the scope of employment, PECRA requires that governments stand behind their employees’ official actions," he said. "The reform incorporates the longstanding doctrine of respondeat superior (the employer is liable). This incentivizes governments to take responsibility for hiring, training, managing and disciplining employees the [same] way private employers do."
Every U.S. citizen, despite where they stand on the political spectrum, should want government officials held to account for constitutional rights violations, Panju said.
"The Institute for Justice is dedicated to fighting judge-made rules that make it extremely difficult to hold government officials accountable for violations of constitutional rights," he said. "Our efforts include direct lawsuits against government officials, appellate friend-of-the-court briefs in support of individuals who suffered at the hands of government officials, and outreach to members of the public who want to know more about the difficulties of holding government officials accountable."
He said the institute's work is committed to this "because of our fundamental belief that following the Constitution means being held accountable for violating it."
"The judge-made rules that allow government officials to violate the Constitution without consequence have no place in our Constitutional republic," he added. "That is a principle that transcends the political spectrum."
