Athul Acharya

Our mission is to reform the doctrines that shield police officers and other public servants from accountability.

Civil-rights lawsuits are a key tool for holding public servants accountable. When the government harms someone—when a police officer beats a journalist, or a prison refuses to treat an inmate’s medical condition, or the state jails a man who’s finished serving his sentence—civil litigation is how the injured person seeks redress in the form of damages. And the threat of damages is a vital part of ensuring that public servants follow the law—including respecting individuals’ constitutional and civil rights.

Over the last 50 years, however, courts have developed a number of doctrines that have hamstrung civil-rights litigation. Some, such as qualified immunity, have recently become political buzzwords. Others, such as Monell liability, various forms of sovereign immunity, and the shrinking of the Bivens doctrine, are less well known. But they all prevent injured individuals from seeking the redress they deserve. Qualified immunity, for instance, turns the ancient rule that ignorance of the law is no excuse on its head—for those who enforce the law, ignorance does excuse liability. The Monell doctrine shields local governments from the basic principle that an employer is responsible for injuries their employees inflict within the course of their employment. And so on.

The net result of these doctrines is that public officials are freer than ever to ignore limitations on their power and run roughshod over the rights of individuals, especially those belonging to racial, gender, sexual orientation, and other minorities. There is thus a need for strategic, coordinated, well-executed litigation to limit these doctrines’ reach.

Public Accountability aims to fill that need.