Qualified Immunity Explained: Law, Limits, and Misconceptions

Qualified Immunity is a concept that is greatly misunderstood. Qualified Immunity is not a free pass for murder, law-breaking, or misconduct, despite what many people believe and share.

A foundational case I’ve referenced often over the past couple of weeks is Graham v. Connor, which establishes the Fourth Amendment framework for evaluating use of force and sets up how courts later analyze Qualified Immunity. Qualified Immunity applies only to individual officers, not departments, and only to civil lawsuits seeking monetary damages. It does not protect officers from criminal charges, internal discipline, or termination. If an officer commits a crime, they are fair game and can be charged like anyone else.

The keyword in Qualified Immunity is qualified. Courts apply our favorite objective reasonableness standard to determine whether that protection applies. The analysis focuses on whether a constitutional right was violated and whether that right was clearly established at the time of the incident. This is an objective legal test, the whole “what a reasonable officer would have known/done” (WWROD), not a judgment about intent, good faith, or whether department policy was followed.

Qualified Immunity exists because officers are required to make rapid decisions in complex and uncertain situations, another key aspect of Graham. It protects officers from personal civil liability when the law is not clearly defined, allowing them to do their jobs without fear of civil punishment based on hindsight.

Qualified Immunity can protect officers who make a bad decision, like a mistake in judgment, if the decision was found to be reasonable.All of the above establishes

Qualified Immunity does not allow officers to freely kill people or break the law. When people call for its removal, pay attention to the other things they demand and say. Those are also most likely wrong, and that person is just saying what they heard but never actually understood.