The trumpist SCOTUS just made the martial law reign of terror more possible in 2024, because law enforcement will make up excuses to deny rights knowing that the courts will let them get away with it. In some cases necessity may require force even if it’s over an hour late, in others, that fascist duo, arbitrary and capricious, will selectively enforce the law, like abduct people or beat the crap out of them because something, something national security.
The Border Patrol agents who killed the school shooter in Uvalde, Texas… entered the school on their own accord after local law enforcement requested that they hold back, two senior federal law enforcement sources told NBC News.
Boule is a U. S. citizen who owns, operates, and lives in a small bed-and-breakfast called the Smuggler’s Inn in Blaine, Washington. The property line of the land on which the inn is located touches the U. S.-Canada border. Shortly after purchasing the property in 2000, Boule became aware that people used his property to cross the border illegally in both directions. Boule began serving as a paid, confidential informant for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in 2003 and for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in 2008. At the time of the events at issue in this case, Boule was still serving as an informant for ICE. ICE would coordinate with CBP and other agencies based on the information Boule provided. Over the years, Boule provided information leading to numerous arrests.
[...]
(dissent) Boule’s Fourth Amendment claim does not arise in a new context. Bivens itself involved a U. S. citizen bringing a Fourth Amendment claim against individual, rank-and-file federal law enforcement officers who allegedly violated his constitutional rights within the United States by entering his property without a warrant and using excessive force.
Those are precisely the facts of Boule’s complaint. The only arguably salient difference in “context” between this case and Bivens is that the defendants in Bivens were employed at the time by the (now-defunct) Federal Bureau of Narcotics, while Agent Egbert was employed by CBP. As discussed, however, this Court’s precedent instructs that some differences are too “trivial . . . to create a new Bivens context.” Ziglar, 582 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 26). 2 That it was a CBP agent rather than a Federal Bureau of Narcotics agent who unlawfully entered Boule’s property and used constitutionally excessive force against him plainly is not the sort of “meaningful” distinction that our new-context inquiry is designed to weed out. Ibid.
[...]
The Court’s application of its new standard to Boule’s Fourth Amendment claim underscores just how novel that standard is. Even assuming the claim presents a new context, the Court’s insistence that national-security concerns bar the claim directly contravenes Ziglar. Moreover, the Court’s holding that a nonbinding administrative investigation process, internal to the agency and offering no meaningful protection of the constitutional interests at stake, constitutes an alternative remedy that forecloses Bivens relief blinks reality.
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Most obviously, the Court’s conclusion that this case, which involves a physical assault by a federal officer against a U. S. citizen on U. S. soil, raises “national security” concerns does exactly what this Court counseled against just four years ago. Back then, the Court advised that “national-security concerns must not become a talisman to use to ward off inconvenient claims—a ‘label’ used to ‘cover a multitude of sins.’” Ziglar, 582 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 20) (quoting Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U. S. 511, 523 (1985)). It explained that this “danger of abuse is even more heightened given the difficulty of defining the security interest in domestic cases.” Ziglar, 582 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 20) (internal quotation marks omitted). This case does not remotely implicate national security. The Court may wish it were otherwise, but on the facts of this case, its effort to raise the specter of national security is mere sleight of hand.
https://t.co/rpRXsAEpbO
Thomas said that he didn't have a 1st Amendment claim under that old case (and the court unanimously agreed). But he also said he didn't have a 4th Amendment claims for excessive force, which is stupid b/c of course he does and if not then Bivens doesn't matter.
5 conservatives held the ridiculous position that the feds can beat people up without consequences.
Gorsuch, this fucker, he basically said that Thomas was wrong but he didn't care because Gorsuch thinks Bivens was wrong in the first place so, YOLO.
Sotomayor, joined by Breyer and Kagan, was like "What the hell guys? This is EXACTLY LIKE Bivens so of course Bivens should apply and this man should be able to recover damages."
The upshot: Until Congress passes a law specifically saying "Federal Agents who beat the crap out of people for no reason can be sued by their victims and recover damages," the conservatives will continue letting feds beat the crap out of people without consequence.
/FIN
Local police showed none of the same reluctance to act when protests erupted in Ferguson eight years ago, facing down unarmed protesters with weapons straight out of a foreign war zone, from tanks and armored vehicles to M4 rifles and shotguns. And I don’t remember any similar hesitancy from the federal police forces I saw when I visited Portland in summer 2020, materializing like space invaders to shoot tear gas canisters and pepper shot into crowds of moms and teachers. But in those cases, they were facing protesters armed with fireworks and leaf blowers, not assault rifles.
It’s also in stark contrast to the long-standing police practice of “no-knock raids,” where officers suddenly kick down a person’s door and terrorize whoever’s inside, guns drawn, killing their pets or the unarmed person inside for the sake of seizing a small amount of drugs — or, as in the case of Breonna Taylor, terrifying the bewildered inhabitants to such an extent that they provoke a deadly gunfight. Perhaps, without the element of surprise, or when you know the person inside is definitely dangerously armed, all that armor and weaponry isn’t quite so effective.
There’s no doubt someone will look at this horror and say that this proves the need to only militarize police and schools further. But that would be a disaster. Not only were police and tactical officers heavily armed and armored as they stood by and let this happen, not only did Uvalde have a SWAT team ostensibly for this very scenario, but the school district had doubled its security budget before the attack.
The way to address this is through the kind of gun control measures that exist in every other country — places that, coincidentally, don’t suffer constant mass shootings — and by attacking the root causes of what drives so many disturbed individuals — in this case a kid, no less — to the point of doing something unspeakable. More militarized police and schools will just mean more brutality and criminalization of students.
And it’ll also mean more brutalization of local communities, which bear the brunt of all this military equipment flowing to law enforcement. The parents of Uvalde may be furious at the police, but they should take care to keep their rage off the streets. After all, like so many other aggrieved communities, then they might really see what the full force of their militarized police can do.
jacobin.com/...