High Court Won’t Hear Law Enforcer Qualified Immunity Cases (3)

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to take on several cases involving the controversial “qualified immunity” rule that shields public officials, including law enforcers, from being answerable in court for even the most egregious allegations of rights violations.

Advocates across the political spectrum, including lawyers, academics, and judges bound to apply qualified immunity have sharply criticized it, though the justices have for years balked at calls to upend or refine it.

The rejection, Monday, of a host of cases all at once, with only a one-case dissent from Justice Clarence Thomas—after they’d spurned three others on May 18—shows the justices ...