What started as a bill that would have banished the legal defense of qualified immunity for police officers in Vermont has been gutted. Now, the bill authorizes nothing more than a study of the issue.
Although proponents asserted a “unified front” of law enforcement and municipalities pressured legislators to weaken the bill, Senate President Pro Tempore Becca Balint, D-Windham, this week said the bill lacked legislative support from the start.
When the Senate passed S.254 in March, it was already stripped of its initial teeth. Instead of abolishing qualified immunity altogether, it authorized a study of the issue and codified the state Supreme Court’s Zullo v. Vermont decision, which grants citizens a private right of action against state police “based on alleged flagrant violations of Article 11.”
Even then, when Senate Judiciary Committee chairperson and lead sponsor of the bill Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington, introduced the bill to his colleagues, he called it a “watered-down” version.
In the weeks since it left the Senate’s grasp, the House cut out even the Zullo language, then sent it back to the Senate for concurrence. On Friday, the Senate approved the changes and tacked on an amendment via voice vote.
If the Senate’s first version was watered-down, Sears told his colleagues on the floor Friday, this latest iteration is “flooded.”
Qualified immunity is a widespread legal doctrine established in U.S. Supreme Court precedent that protects public servants from facing litigation for violating citizens’ civil rights while on the job.
As it applies to police officers, agencies and municipalities say it’s a necessary guard so that officers can police without fear of frivolous lawsuits. But critics argue that it allows officers to act with impunity and denies victims of police brutality a path to justice in civil court.
Last month, proponents of the bill described a “unified front” of opposition to the bill from law enforcement groups and municipalities. Balint, one of the bill’s cosponsors, in a March 11 statement, described “a lot of push back.”
But at an unrelated press conference on Wednesday, she said the bill lacked strong legislative support from the start. It had only four cosponsors, and even with hers and Sears’ names among them, she said, “that’s not signaling widespread support in your caucus or your chamber.”
She said she signed her name onto the bill because she “felt like it was critically important that we have this conversation after 50 years of not having this conversation about how people get justice when they have been ill treated by law enforcement.”
But even as the most powerful senator in the building, she said, “I don’t have a magic wand.”
“It was clear that, despite all of the conversations that I engaged with the members of the committee and the members of the caucus, that there was a strong desire to have more information,” she said.
She continued, “What happened is what always happens in this building. You do the best you can with the people you have at the table. You do the best you can with the information that you have on the ground.”
A legislative study will gather that information, she said. Balint won’t be in the Senate next year, as she’s vacating her seat to make a run for Congress. But she said she hopes lawmakers “find a path to make progress on this.”
The bill must return to the House for concurrence before it heads to the desk of Gov. Phil Scott, who holds the power of the veto pen. Scott has consistently opposed propositions to end qualified immunity this session.
On Friday, Scott spokesperson Jason Maulucci said the governor hasn’t reviewed the latest version of the bill.
“He doesn’t believe the study is necessary, but it’s certainly better than the original proposal from his perspective,” he said.
