By now, many of our readers have heard of qualified immunity. It is a pernicious legal doctrine that shields government officials from accountability for unconstitutional actions unless an appeals court has already decided that nearly identical actions are unconstitutional. This legal fiction serves as a proxy for establishing whether the government official was sufficiently “on notice” that their actions would violate the Constitution. Yet even when qualified immunity is no longer an obstacle, there is a large class of officers who still can’t be sued: the more than 100,000 who work for the federal government.
