The Defense of Qualified Immunity in Employee Termination Suits: Four Cases from the Federal Courts of Appeal

Abstract

Public officials at all levels of government in the United States are provided with some degree of immunity from lawsuits filed against them in their official capacity. At the start it is important to understand that immunity from suit only applies to actions taken by public officials who believe that they are acting within the scope of their position. The legal analysis, and resulting liability, is significantly different when it can be proven that public officials knowingly acted outside the scope of their authority. As in all areas of law, the doctrines that govern immunity from suit have developed over time, with individual cases allowing courts to alter the extent to which public officials are financially liable for actions taken in the pursuit of their jobs. The nature of the job, and not the title of the position held, determines the level of immunity granted to a public official. Public officials engaged in legislative, prosecutorial, and judicial activities are provided with absolute immunity from suit (Rosenbloom and O'Leary, 1996, 279). This means that courts will not permit cases to go forward no matter what the alleged cause of action may be. Officials with absolute immunity simply cannot be sued as a result of actions taken in the course of carrying out their official duties. All other public administrators are provided with qualified immunity from lawsuits filed against them for actions taken while acting in their official capacities. An individual receiving only qualified immunity may be subject to lawsuit if a court finds that certain conditions exist. The standard used to determine whether these conditions exist is whether the public official violate[d] clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person should have known .... If the law was clearly established, the immunity defense ordinarily should fail, since a reasonably competent public official should know the law governing his conduct (Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 [19882]). The existence of qualified immunity, as defined by Harlow v. Fitzgerald, is tested through an objective assessment by the court during the first stages of the lawsuit. The test is said to be objective because the court is asked to evaluate whether any reasonable person would have believed that the action taken by the public administrator was outside the law rather than whether the public administrator being sued believed the questioned action was outside the law. Subjective elements may enter into the court's determination when the motivation of the public official is an element of the claim upon which the plaintiff's lawsuit rests (Grant v. City of Pittsburgh, 98 F.3d 116 [3rd Cir. 1996]). When motivation is an issue, the court must inquire into the actual motivations of the individual public administrator. Actual motivation may be inferred by the court from circumstances surrounding the events giving rise to the cause of action. Cases in which questions of a public official's immunity from suit have arisen have been based on 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983, and the First, Fourth, Fifth and Eighth Amendments to the United States Constitution. U.S.C. Sec. 1983 provides: Every person who, under color of any statute...subjects or causes to be subjected, any citizen...to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceedings for redress. Suit may be brought by individuals in the custody of the government (Smith v. Wade, 461 U.S. 30 [1983]), by citizens harmed during the exercise of their rights of free speech or assembly (Scheuer v. Rhodes, 416 U.S. 232 [1974]), and by government employees fired from their positions. This last category of cases is examined here. The decision to terminate an individual's employment is governed by any number of considerations. …