I thought these two items might be of interest to the list: Daugherty v. Sheer, No. 17-5128 (D.C. Cir. 2018) Summary - The DC Circuit held that two Federal Trade Commission attorneys were immune from suit for their conduct during an enforcement action against a medical-records company after the company's CEO publicly criticized the FTC about their investigation, where the company's data-security practices made patient records available over public file-sharing. The court held that qualified immunity protected all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law and, even if the attorneys sought to retaliate for the public criticism, their actions did not violate any clearly established right absent plausible allegations that their motive was the but-for cause of the Commission's enforcement action. Therefore, the court reversed the district court's denial of qualified immunity to the attorneys. https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/cadc/17-5128/17-5128-2018-06-01.html?utm_source=summary-newsletters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2018-06-08-legal-ethics-78e53c294e&utm_content=text-case-read-more-1 Joanna C. Schwartz, The Case Against Qualified Immunity Abstract - In Ziglar v. Abbasi, Justice Clarence Thomas recommended to the Court that, “[i]n an appropriate case, we should reconsider our qualified immunity jurisprudence.” If the Supreme Court did find an appropriate case to reconsider qualified immunity, and took seriously available evidence about qualified immunity’s historical precedents and current operation, it could not justify continued existence of the doctrine in its current form. Qualified immunity is historically unmoored, ineffective at achieving its policy ends, and detrimental to the development of constitutional law. Scholarly defenses of the doctrine are similarly unpersuasive. The Court should not feel constrained by stare decisis, given the questionable foundations of qualified immunity and the liberty the Court has taken with its scope and structure over the fifty years of its existence. And there are many ways, short of downright repeal, that the Court could adjust the doctrine to better reflect its role in constitutional litigation. The Supreme Court has created the mess that is qualified immunity, and it is time for them to clean it up. Notre Dame Law Review, Vol. 93, 2018, Forthcoming<https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3127031##> UCLA School of Law, Public Law Research Paper No. 18-05<https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3127031##> Phillip M. Sparkes www.linkedin.com/in/psparkes (859) 912-2856