House committee reverses course, advances bill removing qualified immunity for officers

Less than a day after killing a bill that would have allowed citizen to file civil lawsuits against police officers, the Virginia House of Delegates’ Appropriations Committee revived, amended and passed the bill by a 12-8 vote.

The bill, sponsored by Richmond Delegate Jeff Bourne (D) would remove the “qualified immunity” that currently protects officers from such lawsuits in most cases, unless they commit an act that is “clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.”

“Eliminating qualified immunity is not putting the thumb on the scale of justice,” said Bourne as he originally presented the bill to the committee on Monday. “It is simply allowing victims or their families to have a full day in court and not allow a bad actor to escape accountability or responsibility by simply invoking a judge-created defense which effectively cuts off access to justice for many of these victims.”

Two Democrats, Del. David Bulova from Fairfax and Del. David Reid from Loudoun voted with Republicans preventing the bill from advancing on Monday.

On Tuesday however, Reid told the committee that his concern was with off-duty officers being included in the bill and with private businesses that employ them for special duty being held liable. Bourne said he didn’t agree with removing the clause, because it is directed at officers who are in uniform, noting that a police officer working special duty for private businesses looks the same as an officer on duty.

But, he did remove the section in order to help earn passage of the bill.

Other additions to the new bill on Tuesday included adding a two-year limit on filing a civil suit and eliminating language that created protections for mentally ill people.

Republicans opposed the bill, citing concerns of losing qualified officers and being unable to hire new officers due to the risk officers would be facing.

“This is going to have an absolute tremendous, chilling effect on hiring any law enforcement officers in Virginia,” said Del. Barry Knight (R-Va Beach).

Bourne said that the language coming from Republicans as a reason to oppose this bill is the language that props up the systemic racism that they are working to defuse.

“Charges of racism in debate against any member of the Republican Caucus are something I take seriously,” said Republican House Leader Todd Gilbert in a press release Tuesday afternoon. “Upon hearing them, I immediately reviewed the tape of the meeting. What I heard was a legislative policy discussion, with two sides debating the impact of legislation. No motives were questioned, no ad hominem attacks were leveled.”

The bill now will advance to the full House of Delegates floor. The Senate has killed similar bills in the past.

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This article first appeared on VirginiaScope.com; it is republished here with permission.