A California woman won’t be allowed to sue the police officer who allegedly leaked a confidential report of abuse to her violent boyfriend after the Supreme Court refused to review her case, ending her nearly year-long legal battle decade to hold police officers accountable for abetting it. abuse.

The Supreme Court this week refused to accept a application for registration of certiorariand submitted in August by Desiree Martinez. Martinez submitted a federal civil rights lawsuit in 2015 against several police officers in Clovis, California, whom she accused of ignoring multiple attempts to report her abusive boyfriend. She says that’s because her boyfriend, Kyle Pennington, was also a Clovis police officer.

But the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit pent-up that those officers, including one who tipped off her boyfriend, are immune from Martinez’s lawsuit under qualified immunity — a legal doctrine that shields state and local government officials from federal civil lawsuits if their alleged misconduct was not ” clearly established” by existing jurisprudence.

Qualified immunity allows government officials to avoid liability even in cases where the courts find that they have violated the constitutional rights of the plaintiffs. Defenders of qualified immunity say it protects police from frivolous lawsuits, but in practice it also short-circuits credible allegations of civil rights violations before they ever reach a jury.

Martinez was represented by the Institute for Justice, a libertarian-leaning public interest law firm.

“This is obviously extremely disappointing,” said Anya Bidwell, senior staff attorney at the Institute for Justice, in a press release. “Qualified immunity should not be a one-size-fits-all doctrine that protects police officers and office bureaucrats alike. My heart breaks for Desiree. But one day, when we defeat qualified immunity, it will be because she and other heroes like her had the courage to stand up.”

According to Martinez’s Supreme Court petition, in one case, she filed a confidential abuse report against Pennington with Clovis police. Later, during a late-night argument, Pennington called another Clovis officer, Channon High. Pennington put her on speaker and asked Martinez, “So you’re telling the cops what I did to you?”

Martinez denied it, but High chimed in: “Yes, he did. I see a report right here.”

Martinez claims Pennington hung up on her and sexually and physically abused her. Pennington was later convicted of violating a restraining order, and prosecutors dropped more serious charges against him in exchange for a guilty plea to one count of domestic abuse.

Martinez’s 2015 lawsuit alleged that High violated her substantive 14th Amendment rights by disclosing her confidential report to Pennington.

The long legal saga that followed shows how qualified immunity closes the courtroom door to alleged victims of government abuse before their claims can be heard on the merits.

A U.S. District Court initially ruled that High was not entitled to qualified immunity from Martinez’s lawsuit, writing that “it has been clearly established that an officer sharing the confidential information of a domestic violence victim with the alleged abuser would be a due process violation fair of the victim. rights”.

High appealed to the 9th Circuit, which also concluded that “Officer High violated Ms. Martinez’s due process rights by knowingly placing her at greater risk from Mr. Pennington’s attacks.” (When considering a motion to dismiss a civil lawsuit, courts are bound to presume that the plaintiff’s factual allegations are true.)

From that sentence, a reader might assume that the 9th Circuit also found that High was not entitled to qualified immunity—but not so!

Although the previous 9th Circuit ruled in 2006 that police officers violated due process by disclosing complaints to their subjects, ruled that the facts of that case were not sufficiently similar to Martinez’s. Therefore, Martinez’s right to file a domestic abuse complaint without disclosure to her abuser was not clearly established, and High could not have received fair notice that her conduct violated Martinez’s rights.

Whether or not an alleged victim of government abuse can sue the officials responsible often depends on whether they can find a case with a nearly identical past. The practical effect of this is that qualified immunity drags out lawsuits for years and allows constitutional violations as long as they are new.

While the Supreme Court has struck down some individual qualified immunity cases that were particularly revolting— like one in which correctional officers locked a psychiatric inmate in a cell filled with feces and raw sewage — has continually refused to reconsider the doctrine as a whole.

Until it does, or until Congress acts, plaintiffs like Martinez will have no recourse.