By Nana Dadzie Ghansah
In 1871, the Reconstruction-era Congress passed the Ku Klux Klan Act. Section 1 of that act would later become known at 42 U.S.C. § 1983 or “Section 1983” in 1874.
It was originally passed to help African-Americans enforce the new constitutional rights they won after the Civil War.
“Those amendments made slavery illegal, established the right to “due process of law” and equal protection of the laws, and guaranteed every male citizen the right to vote. Although these Amendments became law, white racist judges in the state courts refused to enforce these laws, especially when people had their rights violated by other state or local government officials. The U.S. Congress passed Section 1983 to allow people to sue in federal court when a state or local official violated their federal rights.” (Excerpt from “Jailhouse Lawyer’s Handbook, Chapter 1).
The law states that:
“Every person who, under color (under state authority) of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress.”
This basically meant that if you believed that a state actor like a cop infringed on your civil rights during an interaction or a county clerk treated you differently because of your religious beliefs, you could sue them.
There are legal rules made by judges as they issue rulings on cases, as opposed to rules and laws made by the legislature. This is known as common law. From all indications, once Section 1983 became law, there is nothing in the common law from that era that gave state actors immunity from being sued.
This all would start to change in 1967.
In 1960 the Supreme Court ruled in the Boynton v. Virginia case that segregation of interstate transportation facilities, including bus terminals, was unconstitutional. Starting in May of 1961, a civil rights organization called Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) decided to test if the SC ruling was being adhered to in the Jim Crow South. It started organizing bus rides to the south called “Freedom Rides”. The “Freedom Riders” were a group of white and African-American civil rights activists. The aim was to have mixed racial groups ride into the southern states that still maintained Jim Crow laws and use the facilities there to challenge local laws or customs. The riders were confronted by the police as well by very violent white protesters in the southern states. However, it drew attention to the civil rights movement.
About a year before the SC ruling, three Episcopalian priests formed the Episcopal Society for Cultural and Racial Unity (ESCRU) to fight for racial equality and against segregation in the Episcopal Church and its institutions. It was headquartered in Atlanta, GA.
In the spirit of the Freedom Rides, the ESCRU organized a “Prayer Pilgrimage” from New Orleans, LA to the Episcopal Church Convention in Detroit, MI. The aim was not only to visit Episcopal Churches and schools along the route to preach de-segregation but also to challenge the Jim Crow laws by having a mixed racial group of pastors use transportation facilities in the states with these laws.
On September 11, 1961, an interracial group of 27 priests set off on this “prayer pilgrimage” on a chartered Trailways bus from New Orleans. On arrival in Jackson Mississippi on September 13, fifteen (12 whites and 3 backs) of the integrated group of priests entered the “Whites Only” lunchroom of the Trailways bus terminal. They were asked by 2 cops to “move on” but refused. The group was arrested and thrown in jail by a Captain JL Ray.
One of the priests in the group of 15 was one Father Robert L. Pierson. Incidentally, he was the son-in-law of the then Governor of New York State, Nelson Rockefeller. This led to the incident getting a lot of press coverage.
The priests faced a local judge named James Spencer on September 15. He found them guilty of Breach of Peace (using a now-repealed Mississippi law) and sentenced each of them to four months in jail and a $200 fine. After a few days in jail, they were released on bond.
Led by Fr. Pierson, the group appealed the case in county court. A judge at the county court dismissed the case against the clergymen.
The group subsequently brought a Section 1983 suit against the policemen and the judge for depriving them of their constitutional rights per Section 1983 of the 1871 law. At the district court in Jackson, the jury found in favor of the cops and the judge. On appeal, the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that the local judge was immune from liability. They also ruled that even though the Mississippi law was unconstitutional, “Mississippi law does not require police officers to predict at their peril which state laws are constitutional and which are not.”
The case finally landed in the Supreme Court as Pierson vs Ray in January 1967. It was decided on April 11, 1967. Eight out of the nine judges agreed that “…Judge Spencer was immune from liability for damages, and that Section 1983 would not apply in a judge’s case”. Further, the stated that “Congress would have specifically so provided had it wished.”
Regarding the policemen, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote:
“The common law has never granted police officers an absolute and unqualified immunity, and the officers in this case do not claim that they are entitled to one. Their claim is, rather, that they should not be liable if they acted in good faith and with probable cause in making an arrest under a statute that they believed to be valid. Under the prevailing view in this country, a peace officer who arrests someone with probable cause is not liable for false arrest simply because the innocence of the suspect is later proved.”
With that decision the court basically ushered in the legal concept of “Qualified Immunity”, thus diluting the whole spirit of Section 1983.
“Qualified Immunity” basically means that state actors like policemen can’t be sued unless the plaintiff can demonstrate to the court that they violated “clearly established law.” It further means that as long as the cop was believed to be acting in good faith in line with his work, he or she cannot be held liable for a bad outcome.
That ruling would create a police force that could not be held liable for infringing on the civil rights of the very people they had sworn to protect.