The Supreme Court Just Invalidated The 4th Amendment

The Supreme Court just effectively ruled that federal law enforcement agents have total immunity from being sued for violating the Constitution - particularly when it comes to your fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure. In other words, federal agents whose jurisdiction covers 2/3rds of the US population and nearly every major city can stop, interrogate, search, and assault you without a warrant or reasonable suspicion - and if they do so in violation of the constitution, there is literally nothing you can do about it as the victim. 

This is a nightmare ruling, and overturns one of the most basic legal protections that US citizens have against living in a totalitarian police state, which if you haven’t noticed, we kind of already are. 

Here’s what happened: since 1971, courts have held that private citizens whose rights were violated by federal agents could sue those agents in civil court, which both allowed victims to be financially compensated, and incentivized law enforcement agencies to follow the constitution at the risk of being personally sued for violating it. 

The case that created this precedent, Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents has been an incredibly important ruling in protecting basic civil rights and federal police procedure, like requiring a warrant or being read your Miranda rights. But this week, on June 8th, 2022, the Supreme Court ruled in Egbert v. Boule that that protection no longer existed. In this case, an innkeeper, Robert Boule asked a Border Patrol Agent, Erik Egbert, to leave his property because he didn’t have a warrant. 

Instead of leaving, Egbert physically attacked Boule, and then used his federal connections to report Boule to the IRS as retaliation for the encounter. This Supreme Court ruling says that Boule has no civil recourse against the agent who entered his property without a warrant and assaulted him, and it shuts down the ability for a victim of a civil rights violation to be compensated for being subject to illegal actions by federal law enforcement. And while this ruling is technically specific to Border Patrol agents, which are the largest law enforcement agency in the United States and have jurisdiction within 100 miles of the border, which covers most of the population. 

It also makes clear that when dealing with ANY action against ANY federal law enforcement, if there is ANY quote unquote “rational” reason to dismiss the case, it will be denied, so this ruling serves as a precedent to cover ALL federal agents, not just the Border Patrol. This legal erosion of civil rights is terrifying. Two years ago, the Supreme Court ruled in Hernández v. Mesa that the family of a child who had been shot and killed by Border Patrol agents could not sue the agent who pulled the trigger, even if they could prove that the child had been murdered in cold blood without provocation. 

Our hyper-conservative Supreme Court has created a series of legal precedents that allow federal law enforcement to arrest, search, detain, assault, and even perform executions in violation of the constitution with total civil immunity. In other words, federal law enforcement agents are no longer effectively bound by the constitution because nothing will happen to them if they violate it. 

In fact, the ruling says that if your rights ARE violated, you can file a grievance with the law enforcement agency, which will investigate itself, and no court or other agency can review their decision. This is one of the worst rulings that we have ever seen, it is the biggest attack on our civil rights yet, and we’re terrified of how it’s going to be used against us.

ADDITIONAL SOURCES

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/21-147_g31h.pdf

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CONAN-REV-2016/pdf/GPO-CONAN-REV-2016-10-5.pdf

https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone

https://www.minnesotalawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Kinports_PDF1.pdf

https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep403/usrep403388/usrep403388.pdf

https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2021/05/20/18-35789.pdf

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/17-1678_m6io.pdf

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/21-499_gfbh.pdf

https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/249850.pdf

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5388955/pdf/AJPH.2017.303691.pdf