Why Is It So Hard To Sue A Bad Cop?

“Redress for a federal officer’s unconstitutional acts is either extremely limited or wholly nonexistent.”

- By Damon Root

IN 2019, DEPARTMENT of Homeland Security Agent Ray Lamb was arrested for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and misdemeanor criminal mischief. He’d had an altercation in a Conroe, Texas, restaurant parking lot with Kevin Byrd, the ex-boyfriend of Lamb’s son’s girlfriend. According to Byrd, Lamb threatened him with a gun and tried to smash the window of his car. After Byrd called the cops for help, Lamb pulled out his federal badge, which led the officers to handcuff Byrd and detain him for several hours. It was only after the police reviewed the security camera footage that Byrd was released and Lamb finally placed under arrest.

Byrd sued Lamb over the incident, but in March 2021 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit flatly dismissed his civil rights lawsuit. Why? According to one member of the court, its hands were tied.

“Middle-management circuit judges must salute smartly and follow precedent,” Judge Don Willett regretfully explained in his concurring opinion. “And today’s result is precedentially inescapable: Private citizens who are brutalized—even killed— by rogue federal officers can find little solace” in U.S. Supreme Court case law. The unfortunate reality, Willett observed, is that “if you wear a federal badge, you can inflict excessive force on someone with little fear of liability.”

Vindicating your rights in court is a cornerstone of the rule of law. As the famous British jurist William Blackstone observed, “in vain would rights be declared, in vain directed to be observed, if there were no method of recovering and asserting those rights, when wrongfully withheld or invaded.”