Commission balks at eliminating qualified immunity | News

BOSTON — A state commission has balked at scaling back a legal doctrine that shields police officers from civil lawsuits for brutality or other alleged misconduct.

Following months of deliberation, the Special Commission on Qualified Immunity released a report on Tuesday calling for amending the Massachusetts Civil Rights Act to remove barriers in courts for plaintiffs seeking relief for alleged civil rights infractions and require judges to decide if misconduct violates civil rights laws.

But the Democrat-led commission stopped short of recommending the elimination or overhaul of the qualified immunity law, which community activists and civil rights groups were seeking.

Instead, the panel called for policing reforms to be studied over the next two years before taking any actions to scale back or eliminate the protections.

Commission members tried to put a positive spin on their work, saying they hope to implement further police reforms in the future.

The panel’s co-chairman, Sen. Jamie Eldridge, D-Acton, said he hopes the proposed changes will “increase access to justice for civilians and improve the trust between law enforcement and vulnerable populations, while acknowledging that the qualified immunity reforms in the 2020 police reform law are still being implemented.”

“Qualified immunity remains a key legal doctrine that creates a barrier for everyday Massachusetts residents, disproportionately people of color, to get their day in court to seek justice from mistreatment by law enforcement,” Eldridge said in a statement.

But civil rights advocates panned the commission’s recommendations, saying they don’t go far enough.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts issued a statement saying it was “disappointed” that the report “does not heed the evidence, honor the experiences of impacted people, and recommend meaningful changes to qualified immunity.”

“Let’s be clear, this is a policy decision about who pays when police violate a person’s civil rights,” said Matthew Segal, legal director of the ACLU of Massachusetts. “The longer we leave qualified immunity in place, the longer victims will continue to bear the full cost of that violence — medical bills, funeral expenses, and the emotional trauma of experiencing state violence.”

Police unions have blasted the push to lift the legal protections, saying it would unleash a wave of frivolous lawsuits and prevent them from doing their jobs.

The commission — which included lawmakers, law enforcement professionals, civil rights advocates, and labor unions — was created as part of a police reform package signed by Gov. Charlie Baker in 2020. The reforms were proposed in response to the death of George Floyd, a Black man murdered in Minneapolis police custody.

A key provision of the new law is the creation of a civilian-run, independent oversight board to certify police officers with the power to investigate misconduct and decertify officers accused of wrongdoing.

If officers are decertified, they also could be stripped of qualified immunity protections and have their names added to a national database of police misconduct.

Rep. Michael Day, D-Stoneham, the commission’s co-chair, said the additional reforms proposed by the panel will “provide more clarity to our law enforcement professionals and foster increased public confidence in our criminal justice system.”

“By also requiring our courts to define what conduct violates an individual’s civil rights, whether qualified immunity applies or not, we will allow case law to develop in Massachusetts that will inform policy makers in the future about the successes and failures of police reform,” he said.

Christian M. Wade covers the Massachusetts Statehouse for North of Boston Media Group’s newspapers and websites. Email him at cw***@no***********.com.