{"id":28026,"date":"2023-01-27T16:53:44","date_gmt":"2023-01-27T23:53:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/?p=28026"},"modified":"2023-01-27T16:53:44","modified_gmt":"2023-01-27T23:53:44","slug":"nevada-supreme-court-upholds-the-right-to-sue-the-government-blocks-qualified-immunity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/nevada-supreme-court-upholds-the-right-to-sue-the-government-blocks-qualified-immunity\/","title":{"rendered":"Nevada Supreme Court Upholds The Right To Sue The Government, Blocks Qualified Immunity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Nick Sibilla<\/a>, Senior Contributor<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I cover criminal justice, entrepreneurship, and offbeat lawsuits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a landmark decision<\/a> late last month, the Nevada Supreme Court unanimously ruled that victims of wrongful searches and seizures have the right to sue the responsible government officials. Just as critically, the court firmly rejected qualified immunity as a potential defense against those lawsuits. The court\u2019s twin holdings will better ensure that government officials can actually be held accountable for their misconduct.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAbsent a damages remedy here, no mechanism exists to deter or prevent violations of important individual rights,\u201d Justice Elissa Cadish wrote for the court. And \u201ca right does not, as a practical matter, exist without any remedy for its enforcement.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What became a pivotal ruling for civil rights started because Sonja Mack just wanted to see her boyfriend. Back in 2017, Mack traveled to High Desert State Prison to visit her partner, who was then behind bars. While waiting, Mack said she was approached by two correctional officers, who then conducted a \u201cdemeaning and humiliating\u201d strip search of Mack. Even though officers didn\u2019t find any drugs or contraband, the prison still banned Mack from seeing her boyfriend and revoked her visitation privileges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mack sued, arguing that being strip searched violated her rights under the Nevada Constitution. Mirroring language found in the Fourth Amendment, the Nevada Constitution<\/a> safeguards \u201cthe right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable seizures and searches.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet Nevada\u2019s legislature, like more than\u00a040 other states<\/a>, never passed a civil rights act that expressly let individuals sue the government employees who infringed their constitutional rights. Only state lawmakers, the Nevada Department of Corrections argued, have the power to make government workers liable for civil rights violations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fortunately for Mack, the Nevada Supreme Court disagreed. \u201cConstitutional rights must remain enforceable in the absence of some action by the legislature,\u201d the court ruled, \u201cor risk that constitutional rights become all but \u2018a mere hope.\u2019\u201d When it comes to \u201cself-executing\u201d rights like the right to be free from unlawful searches and seizures, \u201cthe legislature lacks the authority to pass legislation that abridges or impairs those rights.\u201d \u201cLikewise,\u201d Justice Cadish continued, \u201cthe availability of remedies that follow from violations of those rights does not depend on the legislature\u2019s benevolence or foresight.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition, the Nevada Supreme Court refused to import the legal doctrine of qualified immunity. Created by the U.S. Supreme Court four decades ago,\u00a0qualified immunity<\/a>\u00a0shields all government workers from liability, unless they violated a \u201cclearly established\u201d right. Since that usually requires finding an almost identical case as precedent\u2014a very high bar to clear\u2014qualified immunity prevents victims from holding the perpetrators accountable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To visit the prison, Mack caught a ride with an acquittance of hers, Tina Cates<\/a>, who was also trying to see her boyfriend behind bars. Like Mack, Cates also said she was subjected to a humiliating strip search. And she too filed a civil rights lawsuit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But unlike Mack, whose legal claims based on state constitutional rights can now move forward, Cates\u2019 case involved\u00a0federal\u00a0<\/em>claims and was ultimately blocked by qualified immunity. Even though the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that strip searching Cates was \u201cunreasonable under the Fourth Amendment,\u201d the court still\u00a0dismissed<\/a>\u00a0her case since \u201cthere was no case in this circuit where we had held that a prison visitor has a right to leave the prison rather than undergo a strip search.\u201d Accordingly, Cates\u2019 right to be free from strip searches was not yet \u201cclearly established.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though the Nevada Supreme Court ruling is currently limited to searches and seizures, it\u2019s already making an impact. Consider Stephen Lara.<\/a> A veteran who served in the Marines for 16 years, Stephen had his entire life savings\u2014over $87,000\u2014confiscated by a Nevada state trooper. He was never charged with a crime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stephen didn\u2019t back down. Just one day after the Institute for Justice filed a lawsuit, the government returned the cash it wrongfully seized. But the rest of his lawsuit was put on hold while the Nevada Supreme Court considered Mack\u2019s case. Now with a resounding win for individual rights, Stephen\u2019s case to hold the officers accountable can finally move forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe wheels of justice for Stephen Lara can finally move forward after being on hold for more than a year,\u201d said Institute for Justice Attorney Ben Field, who participated in oral argument for\u00a0Mack v. Williams<\/em>. \u201cAs we urged, the Nevada Supreme Court holds that ordinary people like Stephen can sue for damages when government officials go over the line and violate the most basic guarantees in the state constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nick Sibilla, Senior Contributor I cover criminal justice, entrepreneurship, and offbeat lawsuits. In a landmark decision late last month, the Nevada Supreme Court unanimously ruled that victims of wrongful searches and seizures have the right to sue the responsible government officials. Just … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28026"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28027,"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28026\/revisions\/28027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}