Qualified immunity remains a strong defense, protecting state actors--including public school staff--when they are sued for violating an individual’s constitutional rights. Recently, in LG v. Columbia Public Schools et. al., the Eighth Circuit dismissed a suit against a school resource officer (“SRO”) relying on the doctrine of qualified immunity. In that case, a public high school student, LG, sued SRO Keisha Edwards alleging that SRO Edwards violated her Fourth Amendment rights by detaining her (the Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures). According to the complaint, the sixteen-year old was summoned to the school’s office from her classroom. When she arrived, SRO Edwards informed LG that the police were on campus to question her. The SRO then escorted LG to a room in the school where two police officers were waiting. Once LG entered the room, SRO Edwards left and closed the door behind her. The officers interrogated LG about a sexual assault that had occurred off campus. According to LG, she was distraught during the interrogation and thereafter suffered mental health issues. LG filed a federal lawsuit against the assistant principal, SRO Edwards, and the city police officers. In response, SRO Edwards moved to dismiss the complaint on the ground of qualified immunity. While the District Court denied the motion, the Eighth Circuit reversed.
The doctrine of qualified immunity protects a government employee from lawsuits, if the employee was performing a discretionary function, and the employee acts in a manner that a reasonable person would believe was constitutional. The Appellate Court focused on the second leg of the immunity doctrine and explained that “qualified immunity generally protects public officials from constitutional lawsuits where the officials’ conduct ‘does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.’” In analyzing whether there has been a violation of a clearly established right, the Court stated that state actors are “liable only for transgressing bright lines, not for making bad guesses in gray areas.” SRO Edwards did not display a weapon, touch the student, use language or tone indicating that compliance was necessary or retain the student’s property. In determining whether SRO Edwards violated a clearly established constitutional right, the Court found that given SRO “Edwards’s [sic] minimal involvement and the public-school setting, we do not think existing circuit precedent…would have alerted every reasonable officer in Edwards’s [sic] position that she was violating LG’s constitutional rights.” Thus, there was no “bright line” here that SRO Edwards crossed.
Crucially, the Court discussed the important factor that the incident occurred in a public school, where “students have a lesser expectation of privacy than members of the public generally.” Though the Court sympathized that LG reasonably did not feel free to leave the room, the Court stated that “we suspect students rarely feel otherwise while in school, where their attendance is compulsory.” Teachers and administrators control students’ movements to some degree from the first bell to the last. To read the Court’s full opinion please download: