A California woman will not be allowed to sue the police officer who allegedly leaked a confidential abuse report to her abusive boyfriend after the Supreme Court refused to review her case, ending her nearly decade-long legal battle to hold the police accountable for his complicity. abuse.

The Supreme Court refused this week to take up a writ petition of certifyI filed in August by Desiree Martinez. Martinez filed a federal civil rights trial in 2015 against several Clovis, California, police officers, whom she accused of ignoring multiple attempts to report her abusive boyfriend. She says that’s because her boyfriend, Kyle Pennington, was also a Clovis police officer.

But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit governed that these officers, including the one who tipped off her boyfriend, are shielded from Martinez’s lawsuit under qualified immunity – a legal doctrine that protects state and local government officials from federal civil lawsuits if their improper alleged conduct was not “clearly established” by existing case law.

Qualified immunity allows government officials to avoid liability even in cases where courts find they have violated the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights. Defenders of qualified immunity say it protects police from frivolous lawsuits, but in practice it also short-circuits credible allegations of civil rights violations before they even reach a jury.

Martinez was represented by the Institute for Justice, a libertarian-leaning public interest law firm.

“This is obviously extremely disappointing,” Anya Bidwell, senior counsel at the Institute for Justice, said in a statement. a press release. “Qualified immunity should not be a universal doctrine that protects cops in the field as well as bureaucrats confined to the office. My heart breaks for Desiree. But one day, when we defeat qualified immunity, it will be because that she and other heroes like her had the courage to stand up.”

According to Martinez’s petition to the Supreme Court, in one case she filed a confidential abuse report against Pennington with Clovis police. Later, during a late-night argument, Pennington called another Clovis officer, Channon High. Pennington put her on speakerphone and asked Martinez, “So are you telling the cops what I did to you?”

Martinez denied it, but High responded: “Yes, she did it. I see a connection here.”

Martinez claims Pennington hung up and sexually and physically assaulted her. Pennington was later convicted of violating a restraining order, and prosecutors dropped more serious charges against him in exchange for a guilty plea to a single misdemeanor charge of domestic violence.

Martinez’s 2015 lawsuit alleged that High violated his substantial due process rights under the 14th Amendment by disclosing his confidential report to Pennington.

The long legal saga that followed shows how conditional immunity shuts the courthouse door on alleged victims of government abuse before their claims can be adjudicated on the merits.

A U.S. district court initially ruled that High was not entitled to qualified immunity from Martinez’s lawsuit, writing that “it was clearly established that an agent sharing a domestic violence victim’s confidential information with the “alleged attacker would constitute a violation of the victim’s substantive due process.” rights.”

High appealed to the 9th Circuit, which also found that “Officer High violated Ms. Martinez’s due process rights by knowingly placing her in greater danger from Mr. Pennington’s assaults.” (When considering a motion to dismiss a civil action, courts are required to assume that the plaintiff’s factual allegations are true.)

From this sentence, a reader might assume that the 9th Circuit also found that High was not entitled to qualified immunity – but that is not the case!

Although the 9th Circuit previously ruled in 2006 that the officers had violated due process by disclosing complaints about their subjects, he decided that the facts of that case were not sufficiently similar to those of Martinez. Therefore, Martinez’s right to file a domestic violence complaint without disclosure to her attacker was not clearly established, and High could not have been informed that her conduct violated Martinez’s rights.

Whether an alleged victim of government abuse can sue the officials responsible often depends on whether they find a case with a nearly identical history. The practical effect of this is that conditional immunity prolongs trials for years and permits constitutional violations as long as they are new.

Although the Supreme Court has overturned some individual qualified immunity cases that were particularly scandalous– like the one where correctional officers locked a psychiatric inmate in a cell filled with feces and sewage – she has continually refused to reconsider the doctrine as a whole.

Until that happens, or until Congress gets its act together, plaintiffs like Martinez will have no recourse.