Man beaten by cops can sue, court rules

A man who was injured when police threw him facefirst to the ground after a traffic stop can sue the officers for excessive force, a federal appeals court ruled Monday, another round in the debate over the “qualified immunity” liability shield that the U.S. House has voted to abolish.

Lee Arthur Rice II’s suit against police in Boise, Idaho, had been dismissed by a federal judge, who said the officers’ conduct had not been clearly ruled illegal in any previous case, the immunity standard that the Supreme Court had established in 1982. But the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said the police conduct Rice alleged — slamming him to the pavement when he was offering no resistance after being stopped for a minor offense — was grounds for a lawsuit even under the high court’s demanding standard.

Rice was stopped on a highway in December 2011 by an officer who said he had not signaled for five seconds before changing lanes. The court said Rice thought there was no reason for the stop, and showed the officer his driver’s license but declined to give it to her and asked to speak to her supervisor.

After the officer radioed for help, two officers pulled Rice out of the car, and two officers held him by the arms and threw him to the ground, where officers beat and kneed him before handcuffing him and taking him to jail. He said he suffered longlasting injuries. A state court later ruled the police stop illegal and dismissed charges against Rice.

The appeals court said suits had been allowed in similar cases, including one by logging protesters in Humboldt County who linked themselves together and were peppersprayed by officers when they refused to leave.

Rice did not threaten any officers, and a reasonable jury could find that he offered only “passive resistance,” Judge Richard Paez said in a 30 ruling reinstating the lawsuit.

Qualified immunity protects police and other government officials from damage suits for violating someone’s legal rights unless those rights were so “clearly established” that a reasonable officer would have known about them.

The Supreme Court has said the rule allows officers to do their jobs without fear of punishment for splitsecond decisions made in good faith. Civil rights advocates say the doctrine has been used to shield police from accountability.

Last Wednesday the House, on a 220212 partyline vote, passed legislation that would abolish qualified immunity and instead allow suits against police and other government employees to proceed if victims could show the officer had acted unreasonably, the standard for claims against private citizens.

The bill would also ban police choke holds, which are already illegal in California. Named for George Floyd, the Minneapolis man who died last May as an officer knelt on his neck, the legislation has little chance of passage in the Senate, where it would need at least 10 Republican votes because of the filibuster rule.