{"id":1096,"date":"2007-06-29T12:10:00","date_gmt":"2007-06-26T06:29:32","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-06-26T06:29:32","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=1096","title":{"rendered":"SCOTUS decides that government employees acting within area of their discretion are immune from Bivens<\/em> actions"},"content":{"rendered":"

The United States Supreme Court decided yesterday a malicious prosecution\/RICO case with a Fourth and Fifth Amendment implication: Wilkie v. Robbins<\/a>. The Court held 7-2 (Opinion by Souter, concurring opinion by Thomas, Ginsburg concurring in part and dissenting in part) that actions by federal employees acting within their duties are not subject to suit under Bivens<\/em> or RICO. The case is interesting for civil practitioners dealing with potential immunity from Bivens<\/em> actions, but it does not have broad enough Fourth Amendment implications to discuss at length. Instead, consider this quote from Willamette Law Online:<\/p>\n

Robbins\u2019 High Island Ranch is private property intermingled with parcels belonging to private owners and both the state and federal governments. When Robbins bought the Ranch the easement previously enjoyed by the government had not been recorded. Negotiations with Robbins to reestablish the easement broke down and he refused to re-grant it. This conflict led to numerous trespass and permit-revocation actions cited in this suit. Robbins brought suit both under the RICO Act and the Fourth and Fifth Amendments as applied in the Bivens case. The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed the United States District Court for the District of Wyoming\u2019s dismissal of the charges and the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari. The Court held that aggressive practices from Bureau of Land Management employees were within their job descriptions for the most part and allowing a Constitutional tort claim against those employees under Bivens<\/em> would do more harm than good. The proper remedy to overzealous government employees is legislative not judicial. [Summarized by Melissa Parker]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"pingsdone","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1096\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}