UPDATE: The House Appropriations Committee revived the bill on Tuesday morning, passing it and advancing it to the full House floor. Read about it here.
The Appropriations Committee for the House of Delegates met on Monday afternoon to take up more budget amendment bills. One of the bills they discussed was HB 5013, which would allow citizens to file civil lawsuits against police officers.
The current policy in place protects law enforcement officers for the most part unless they commit an act that is “clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known”. Sponsored by Del. Jeff Bourne (D-Richmond), this legislation is known commonly as qualified immunity.
“Eliminating qualified immunity is not putting the thumb on the scale of justice,” said Bourne as he presented the bill to the Committee. “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.”
Princess Blanding, a community activist, and sister of Marcus-David Peters spoke in favor of the bill – asking the Committee to put people over profits and politics. “We must pass this bill to end qualified immunity so that officers will think twice before devaluing black and brown lives,” said Blanding.
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). “I urge the Committee to vote no”.
The bill failed to report out of the Appropriations Committee on an 11-11 vote. Two Democrats, Del. David Bulova from Fairfax and Del. David Reid from Loudon voted with Republicans preventing the bill from advancing.
Technically the bill can be brought back up by the full House in the future, but the Senate has already killed similar legislation – leaving Delegates doubtful that this legislation would make it out of the Senate regardless.
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