Landmark Publications

Civil Rights Suits Against Law Enforcement Landmark Publications

THIS CASEBOOK contains a selection of U. S. Court of Appeals decisions that analyze and discuss issues surrounding civil rights suits brought against law enforcement agencies. Volume 1 of the casebook covers the District of Columbia Circuit and the First through the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. * * * As the Supreme Court recently reminded us, Bivens is the byproduct of an "ancien regime." Ziglar v. Abbasi, ___ U. S. ___, 137 S. Ct. 1843, 1855, 198 L. Ed.2d 290 (2017) (quotation omitted). In 1971, the Court recognized an implied cause of action to sue federal officers for violating an arrestee's "rights of privacy" by "manacl[ing] petitioner in front of his wife and children," "threaten[ing] to arrest the entire family," and strip searching him. Bivens, 403 U. S. at 389-90, 91 S. Ct. 1999. In the next nine years, the Court recognized two more implied causes of action under Bivens: a Fifth Amendment equal protection claim for employment discrimination by a congressman, see Davis v. Passman, 442 U. S. 228, 99 S. Ct. 2264, 60 L. Ed.2d 846 (1979), and an Eighth Amendment claim for inadequate medical care by federal jailers, see Carlson v. Green, 446 U. S. 14, 100 S. Ct. 1468, 64 L. Ed.2d 15 (1980). Since 1980, however, "the Court has refused" every Bivens claim presented to it. Abbasi, 137 S. Ct. at 1857; see also ibid. (collecting cases). The Court has emphasized that Bivens, Davis, and Carlson remain good law. See id. at 1856-57. At the same time, "it is possible that the analysis in the Court's three Bivens cases might have been different if they were decided today." Id. at 1856. And it has admonished us to exercise "caution" in the "disfavored judicial activity" of extending Bivens to any new set of facts. Id. at 1857 (quotations omitted). Cantu v. Moody, 933 F. 3d 414 (5th Cir. 2019)