This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Saturday, July 4th, 2020. I'm Caleb Brown. The

Supreme Court isn't taking a case on qualified immunity and efforts to abolish

the court invented doctrine legislatively still faces an uncertain future.

In Colorado though, that state has done away with it as part of a massive criminal justice overhaul.

Leslie Herod is a Democratic state representative in Colorado.

She wrote the bill that, among other things, abolished qualified immunity in the state.

We spoke earlier this week.

Following the deaths of Brianna Taylor in Louisville, where I am, George Floyd in Minneapolis

and this apparent groundswell of support for black lives, for ending police brutality,

some states have acted where the feds have not.

So what has Colorado done?

Yeah, well I'm proud to say that Colorado has become the first state to end qualified immunity at the state level.

What we did was in direct response to the protesters, to the calls for justice, and the unfortunate

deaths of people right here in Colorado like

Elijah McClain and Devon Bailey. We introduced a sweeping reform package,

law enforcement accountability and integrity Integrity Act to really ensure that we were holding

law enforcement officers accountable.

So the bill does a few things.

It changes the entire use of force statutes so that you can no longer do things like

chokeholds or fleeing felon meaning shooting someone in the back but it also

rains in when it's appropriate to use force to an objective as opposed to

subjective standard which is really important.

...