A cop lied, fabricated a sex-trafficking case, jailed a teen - and can’t be sued \ stacker news ~Politics_And

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A cop lied, fabricated a sex-trafficking case, jailed a teen - and can’t be sued reason.com/2025/08/01/a-cop-lied-fabricated-a-sex-trafficking-case-and-jailed-a-teen-on-false-charges-and-still-cant-be-sued/

106 sats \ 3 comments \ @optimism 1 Aug Politics_And_Law

Qualified immunity for the feds is such an odd concept.

Though the 8th Circuit conceded that Weyker's sex-traffing investigation was "plagued with problems from the start"—the trial judge found, for example, that she fabricated information and lied multiple times under oath—the court said she was, in fact, immune. But that wasn't because she was entitled to qualified immunity. Rather, although Weyker was a St. Paul police officer, she had been cross-deputized on a federal task force to carry out the investigation, making available to her the legal protections afforded to federal law enforcement—a much higher bar for alleged victims to clear.

But I guess if you are the law, you're automatically above the law... ugh.

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100 sats \ 2 replies \ @Rothbardian_fanatic 1 Aug

I guess this is only to be expected in a police state, isn’t it? Wow a nice federal police state, at that! Isn’t there the possibility that the officer could be sued in a common law court for acting unlawfully with the color of law? The common people could make this one stick if they desired, IMHO. if not, then self-defense should be considered by the general public whenever they see the unaccountable, invulnerable, immune police forces approaching them with firearms.

30 sats \ 1 reply \ @optimism OP 1 Aug

Isn’t there the possibility that the officer could be sued in a common law court for acting unlawfully with the color of law?

So I thought that with "no police qualified immunity", that was enough, but (from the article):

Lawsuits against federal employees are subject to the Bivens doctrine. Named after the landmark 1971 Supreme Court case Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, the ruling allowed a man to sue the federal agents who conducted a warrantless raid on his home and then strip-searched him at a courthouse.

But the Supreme Court has made it almost cartoonishly difficult for plaintiffs to make use of what was a very good decision. In 2017, the Court ruled in Ziglar v. Abbasi that Bivens claims against federal agents can survive only if they pass a two-pronged test. Step one: Does the claim arise in a "new context"—in other words, is it "different in a meaningful way from previous Bivens cases decided by" the Supreme Court? Unless a complaint mirrors the original facts of Bivens almost identically, or the facts of the small handful of cases that were allowed to proceed in times past, then the answer is "yes." Step two: Are there any "special factors counselling hesitation"—that is, reasons the judiciary should think twice about creating a new damages remedy against federal agents? The answer in the courts to the latter question, it seems, is also essentially always "yes."

"Sorry, can't sue"

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @Rothbardian_fanatic 1 Aug

Yes, however, I thought that the common court could handle the matter, no matter what SCOTUS had to say about it. Perhaps SCOTUS would have a tough time overruling a decision by a common court, because, after all, common courts make or break precedence, too.