A local St. Paul, Minnesota, police officer, Heather Weyker, claimed to have uncovered a vast interstate sex trafficking conspiracy, which led to the indictment of thirty individuals. But no such conspiracy existed. In the Eighth Circuit’s words, the entire scheme was based on “lies, manipulate[d] witnesses, and falsifie[d] evidence.”
One of those witnesses, Muna Abdulkadir, assaulted two girls, including the petitioner, Hamdi Mohamud, at knifepoint in an altercation unrelated to Weyker’s investigation. When Weyker caught wind of the assault, she falsely informed officers on the scene that Abdulkadir’s victims were attempting to intimidate a federal witness to deter her cooperation. Weyker then prepared a criminal complaint against the two girls in which she (to again quote the Eighth Circuit) “once again fabricated facts, knowingly relayed false information, and withheld exculpatory facts.”
Based on Weyker’s false testimony, Mohamud, a 16-year-old girl, languished in prison for over two years for a crime she did not commit. The government eventually abandoned its case.
Following her release, Mohamud sued Weyker. But a divided panel of the Eighth Circuit held that Weyker’s cross-deputized status meant she was neither a state officer nor a federal one for purposes of civil rights law, so she could not be sued. As a result, Mohamud was stripped of over two years of her childhood without recompense, while Weyker remains employed by the same police department—and was even promoted in the intervening time after the Justice Department footed the burden of her civil defense.
The Eighth Circuit’s holding flies in the face of constitutional first principles. A central grievance of colonial America was England’s attempt to shield its officials from judicial accountability. Under what became known as the Intolerable Acts, England stripped Bostonians of their right to have local juries hear cases of abuse committed by royal officers. The loss of a local judicial forum was an animating grievance of American independence. Yet not even the British were so bold as to declare that no court could hear claims against their rights-violating officers, as the Eighth Circuit held below.
Assisted by counsel from WilmerHale, Cato filed a brief urging the Supreme Court to review the case and reverse. The decision below conflicts with the Constitution’s original public meaning and the Supreme Court’s precedents. Should the decision below stand, any state officer can enjoy blanket immunity through the mere incantation of federal authority.