The last Section 1983 Litigation column analyzed whether a private party state actor sued under §1983 is entitled to assert the defense of qualified immunity. That column focused upon the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Filarsky v. Delia1 that a private attorney hired by a municipality to conduct an internal investigation was allowed to assert qualified immunity.
We now turn our attention to last term’s other major qualified immunity decision, Messerschmidt v. Millender.2 In that case, the Supreme Court held that police officers who sought and executed a very broad warrant authorizing them to search a residence for guns and gang-related material were protected by qualified immunity. The court assumed that the warrant violated the Fourth Amendment, yet found that the officers acted in an objectively reasonable manner. The court relied heavily upon the facts that the warrant was issued by a neutral magistrate, and the officers who applied the warrant had secured approval for it from superior officers.
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