In the United States, qualified immunity is a legal principle of federal constitutional law that grants government officials performing discretionary (optional) functions immunity from lawsuits for damages unless the plaintiff shows that the official violated "clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known".[1] It is comparable to sovereign immunity, though it protects government employees rather than the government itself. It is less strict than absolute immunity, by protecting officials who "make reasonable but mistaken judgments about open legal questions",[2] extending to "all [officials] but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law".[3] Qualified immunity applies only to government officials in civil litigation, and does not protect the government itself from suits arising from officials' actions.[4]
The U.S. Supreme Court first introduced the qualified immunity doctrine in Pierson v. Ray (1967), a case litigated during the height of the civil rights movement. It is stated to have been originally introduced with the rationale of protecting law enforcement officials from frivolous lawsuits and financial liability in cases where they acted in good faith in unclear legal situations.[5][6] Starting around 2005, courts increasingly applied the doctrine to cases involving the use of excessive or deadly force by police, leading to widespread criticism that it "has become a nearly failsafe tool to let police brutality go unpunished and deny victims their constitutional rights" (as summarized in a 2020 Reuters report).[7]
Qualified immunity only applies to suits against government officials as individuals, not suits against the government for damages caused by the officials' actions.
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