The folks who haven’t even passed the bar yet are more committed to defending the Constitution than the corps of government lawyers who swore to uphold it.
A student-led coalition has gathered more than 2,600 signatures from law students, legal academics, and law student organizations across 109 law schools calling on Congress to pass the Federal Officer Accountability Act. As the Department of Homeland Security disappears suspected migrants without due process, arbitrarily harasses citizens, and point blank kills innocent people on camera, a shocked public has learned what lawyers have talked about for years: the government has stacked the immunity deck to functionally shield law enforcement from accountability. But Congress could, if it wanted to, put a stop border enforcement’s cheat codes by statutorily authorizing lawsuits against federal officers for constitutional violations.
As reported by The Nation, the effort grew out of a late-night idea by Berkeley Law students — including Amelia Dal Pra, Zadie Adams, Isaiah Paik, Shree Mehrotra, and Kaylana Mueller-Hsia — inspired by Times opinion piece from Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and NYU professor emeritus Burt Neuborne. Within one week, the letter attracted signatures from 146 legal academics, 22 law student governments, and 224 law student organizations.
If you fit one of those descriptions and haven’t signed on yet, here’s your opportunity.
Section 1983 allows individuals to sue state and local officers for constitutional violations since 1871. As appellate attorney Chris Truax put it in The Hill, Section 1983 is “kryptonite for nascent tyranny.” That’s a tad overstated since Superman doesn’t get to avoid kryptonite just by telling a court he was following standard procedure. The judicially contrived defense of “qualified immunity” — the most consequential typo in American law — frustrates most 1983 cases, giving law enforcement a “Get Out of Responsibility Free” card as long as they can sell a judge that it’s totally normal police procedure to light a man on fire. Superman wishes his heat vision could do that!
But to the most egregious police conduct occasionally results in some 1983 accountability it puts some brakes on police misconduct to know they might have to justify their actions in court if they go full jackboot.
Federal law enforcement has no such check.
The Supreme Court briefly created a workaround to hold federal agents to account in Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents. But since that 1971 opinion, the Supreme Court has methodically dismantled that remedy. In Egbert v. Boule (2022), the Court all but closed the door entirely, reasoning that if Congress wants people to be able to sue federal officers, Congress should pass a law.
These law students take the Court at its word.
Their proposed text of the Federal Officer Accountability Act mirrors Section 1983’s language, extended to those acting under the authority of federal law. But it also adds the kicker that officers found to have used excessive force cannot be shielded by qualified immunity.
Minnesota is presently a constitutional law dumpster fire. The Constitutional Accountability Center identifies at least five constitutional amendments that the Trump administration is repeatedly violating on the ground. Federal agents have killed American citizens Renée Good and Alex Pretti on film during immigration enforcement operations. Over 50 people have died in ICE detention under this administration. A federal judge in Minnesota has cataloged ICE violating 96 court orders in 74 cases since January 1, 2026 — a stunning series of contemptuous failures that led one government lawyer to a bit of an in-court breakdown. ICE has taken the position that the Fourth Amendment doesn’t apply to noncitizens. The need for a federal 1983 is as pronounced as ever.
Under the current legal framework, the families of the dead have essentially no civil remedy against the individual officers. Even the state courts are closed off because federal agents can automatically remove to federal court. They can’t rely upon internal review — the FBI had a warrant to investigate Renee Good’s murder and Trump officials called it off.
The law students are shouldering the nation’s ethical and constitutional burdens while government lawyers run roughshod.
Administration lawyers are filing baseless charges against the administration’s political enemies and arresting journalists, advancing facially frivolous legal theories. As they rack up clear and public violations of the code we are supposedly bound to uphold, the most pressing professional obligation upon the rest of us is to make sure these lawyers never practice again. But while these bottom-feeders trash their oaths providing cover for constitutional abuses, law students read an op-ed, recognized a repairable problem in American law, and built a nationwide coalition in seven days. They managed to draft a concrete solution to a problem Congress hasn’t managed to figure out for decades.
The kids, as they say, are all right. And, fine, some of the professors too.
ICE Officers Should Be Held Accountable. These Law School Students Know How. [The Nation]
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
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