3 ms·
I was actually curious about this - the decision mentions in a footnote that qualified immunity exists for just this reason. Is the story that these officials (
by geofft 6y ago
I was actually curious about this - the decision mentions in a footnote that qualified immunity exists for just this reason. Is the story that these officials (and their lawyers) just forgot to raise a qualified immunity defense, and therefore couldn't raise it on appeal? Or is there some reason it didn't protect them?
- pdonis 6y agoQualified immunity doesn't protect a government official who violates "clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known" [1]. Also, qualified immunity applies to "discretionary" functions performed by government officials, but "discretionary" doesn't mean "whatever the official thinks is ok". It means a function in which the applicable laws and regulations do not dictate exactly what the government official is to do, but leave some scope within which the official has the discretion to choose a specific action. So whether qualified immunity would protect an FBI agent who put someone on the No Fly list would depend on why they did it and whether the applicable laws and regulations allowed them the discretion to do it for that reason. I doubt the applicable laws and regulations allow FBI agents the discretion to put someone on the No Fly list simply because they refused to be a government informant. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity