Supreme Court Sides with Police in Qualified Immunity Cases

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that police officers in two cases were entitled to qualified immunity, a key issue for police reform advocates. No dissent was filed in either case. In both cases, the Court argued that lower courts had improperly applied past cases as precedent for defining the officers’ actions as having violated "clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.” The first case involved an officer kneeling on the plaintiff’s back for eight seconds; the other involved multiple officers lethally shooting a man after he grabbed a hammer and raised it at them. 

Coverage was somewhat more common in left- and center-rated outlets than right-rated outlets on Monday. Coverage was mostly balanced across the spectrum, with some outlets focusing only on the case itself and others including the political context surrounding qualified immunity.