Civil Rights and Federal Practice Clinic takes on police brutality case

The Tulane Civil Rights and Federal Practice Clinic represents clients who have experienced discrimination or other kinds of civil rights violations. Their cases are not all alike.

For example, student attorneys represent essential workers whose employers have fired them because they were hospitalized in connection with a disability; voters whose political leaders have gerrymandered their districts so as to dilute their votes based on race; and families who tried to rent an apartment but saw their application torn up when the landlord learned that their families included younger children. The law protects many different categories of people and applies in many contexts, so student attorneys cannot learn a single formula and apply it in one case after another.

But the Clinic’s clients have in common their willingness to work as a team with student attorneys, empowering each other to move the law forward.

One of the more significant cases of the academic year saw the Clinic expand its work in combatting unlawful police brutality. In October, the clinic filed a petition for a writ of certiorari in Tucker v. City of Shreveport, on behalf of Gregory Tucker. Tucker was beaten by four Shreveport police officers, while handcuffed and on the ground, after they pulled him over for a broken taillight.

A lower court ruled that the officers were not entitled to qualified immunity, but the Fifth Circuit overturned that, granting them the protection. The Clinic petition asked that the U.S. Supreme Court reject the Fifth Circuit’s restrictive approach to qualified immunity, which shields all police misconduct from scrutiny unless a plaintiff can find an earlier case with nearly identical facts.

Experts at the Cato Institute filed an amicus brief in support of Tucker’s position. Although the Court later denied the petition, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote separately to observe that the Fifth Circuit’s position is “highly questionable” for the reasons explained by the dissenting Fifth Circuit Judge.

The clinic will now represent Tucker as he pursues his remaining claims, including claims against the police department, in the Western District of Louisiana.