Supreme Court Won’t Hear a Qualified Immunity Case Where a Cop Disclosed an Abuse Report to a Woman’s Abuser
A California woman won’t be allowed to sue the police officer who allegedly leaked a confidential abuse report to her violent boyfriend after the Supreme Court declined to review her case, ending her nearly decade-long legal battle to hold police officers responsible for abetting her abuse.
The Supreme Court declined this week to take up a petition for writ of certiorari filed in August by Desiree Martinez. Martinez filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in 2015 against several police officers in Clovis, California, who she accused of ignoring multiple attempts to report her abusive boyfriend. She says that’s because her boyfriend, Kyle Pennington, was also a Clovis police officer.
But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled that those officers, including one who tipped off her boyfriend, are immune from Martinez’s lawsuit under qualified immunity—a legal doctrine that shields state and local government officials from federal civil suits if their alleged misconduct was not “clearly established” by existing case law.Â
Qualified immunity allows government officials to avoid liability even in cases where courts find that they violated the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights. Defenders of qualified immunity say it protects police from frivolous lawsuits, but in practice it also short-circuits credible allegations of civil rights violations before they ever reach a jury.
Martinez was represented by the Institute for Justice, a libertarian-leaning public interest law firm.
“This is obviously hugely disappointing,” Anya Bidwell, an Institute for Justice senior attorney, said in a press release. “Qualified immunity should not be a one-size-fits-all doctrine that protects on-the-beat cops and desk-bound bureaucrats alike. My heart breaks for Desiree. But one day, when we defeat qualified immunity, it will be because she and other heroes like her had the courage to stand up.”
According to Martinez’s Supreme Court petition, in one instance she filed a confidential abuse report against Pennington to the Clovis police. Later, during a late-night argument, Pennington called another Clo
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