The Complicated Web of Immunities That Makes Accountability So Difficult, Part 2
Opening Arguments
Opening Arguments Media LLC
4.3 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 28 January 2026
⏱️ 74 minutes
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Summary
Part 2 of 2.
OA 1230 - Seeing all the obstacles to holding government officials accountable, Congress created Section 1983, allowing citizens to sue for money damages for violations of their civil rights. We cover how that works, the one weird trick it uses to get around state sovereign immunity, and how that accidentally created the infamous qualified immunity doctrine that has made police seemingly unaccountable. We also discuss proposed reforms that might fix issues of qualified and sovereign immunity.
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Pierson v Ray, 386 U.S. 547 (1967)
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Graham v Conner, 490 U.S. 386 (1989)
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Pearson v Callahan, 555 U.S. 223 (2009)
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Kisela v Hughes, 584 U.S. 100 (2018)
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Barnes v Felix, 605 U.S. 73 (2025)
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Barnes v Felix, 138 Harvard L. Rev. 291 (2025).
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Julia Yoo, The Problem with Policing in the United States, ADVOCATE (Feb. 2021).
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David J. Ignall, Making Sense of Qualified Immunity: Summary Judgment and Issues for the Trier of Fact, 30 Cal. W. L. Rev. 201 (1994). (NOTE: Good review for basics, but note the date!)
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Bivens v. Six Unknown-Named Agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388 (1971)
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Egbert v Boule, 596 U.S. 482 (2022)
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S. 122 Qualified Immunity Act of 2025 119th Cong. (2025)
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S. 3186 Constitutional Accountability Act 119th Congr. (2025)
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H.R. 6091 Bivens Act of 2025 119th Congr. (2025)
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H.R. 4944 Ending Qualified Immunity for ICE Agents Act 119th Congr. (2025)
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Qualified Immunity Abolition Act of 2026 (no bill number assigned yet)
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Gelinas, S. (2026, January 18). Markey, Pressley renew push to end qualified immunity after ICE shooting death. Athol Daily News.
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Check out the OA Linktree for all the places to go and things to do!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | it would be really stupid if there's absolutely nothing you could do about this obvious, egregious |
| 0:08.6 | violation of someone's rights. |
| 0:17.6 | The officer is shouting, don't fucking move, shoots into the car twice, unable to see inside. |
| 0:25.6 | Barnes manages to stop the car. |
| 0:27.2 | He later dies on the scene. |
| 0:28.5 | And the grand jury declined to bring criminal charges. |
| 0:35.3 | Hello and welcome to opening arguments. |
| 0:37.3 | This is episode 1230. And a bit of a switch up. Normally we do the |
| 0:42.0 | YouTube videos on Wednesdays. This week though, I mentioned last time I was thinking of recording |
| 0:47.4 | serious inquiries only on the Alex Preti murder and I did and it ended up being, I did it on video |
| 0:53.7 | on the YouTube if you'd like to watch |
| 0:55.3 | or on serious inquiries only if you'd like to listen. But it ended up being very long, nearly |
| 1:00.1 | two hours, I think two hours and 40 minutes of video on the YouTube. So we figured, why don't we |
| 1:04.7 | just let that be the video content for this week? Also, Matt's got an interesting scheduling |
| 1:09.3 | thing coming that actually might work to our advantage. He's going to be taking a little trip and we might get some coverage out of it. So all that is to say, we're just going to give you that part two of qualified immunity and all the other immunities today, which is great. I didn't want you guys to have to wait a week. That was a bummer. I'm glad that it's kind of working out that this will be the |
| 1:27.9 | best of all worlds. So that's what we're going to do today. Part two, we get into more cases, |
| 1:32.7 | a little bit of debunking of some misinformation, and we'll finish out Janessa's comprehensive |
| 1:37.5 | course on the tangled web of immunities that stands between us and accountability a lot of the time. All right, thanks so much |
| 1:45.1 | for listening. We'll get on over to Janessa. Janessa, how are you doing? I am doing so different |
| 1:51.3 | from the last time we talked. Yeah, real live attorney and first, a winner of the first place |
| 1:57.1 | prize of guests, the case thing you described in your class. |
| 2:02.6 | What was that? |
... |
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