Passed to protect formerly enslaved people and their allies from Klan violence and from state officials who allowed or joined it. Anyone acting under color of state law who deprives a person of federal rights is made liable to the injured party.

Chicago police broke into the Monroe family’s home without a warrant, ransacked it, and held James Monroe for hours without charges. The Court held § 1983 reaches officers who abuse their authority even when their conduct also violates state law, opening federal court to suits against individual police officers.

Clergy arrested in Jackson, Mississippi in 1961 for using a segregated bus terminal waiting room sued the officers. The Court held police could defend themselves by showing they acted in good faith and with probable cause, borrowing the idea from the common law of false arrest.

Federal narcotics agents searched Webster Bivens’s apartment and arrested him without a warrant. Section 1983 covers only state actors, so the Court recognized a damages claim directly under the Fourth Amendment against federal officers who violate it.

Air Force analyst A. Ernest Fitzgerald sued senior Nixon White House aides over his firing after he testified to Congress about cost overruns. The Court removed the subjective good-faith inquiry and held officials immune unless they violated “clearly established statutory or constitutional rights” a reasonable person would have known.

A Rhode Island state trooper obtained arrest warrants on thin evidence. The Court held a magistrate’s signature does not automatically protect the officer who applied, if no reasonably competent officer would have sought the warrant. It also described the defense as protecting “all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law.”

An FBI agent searched the Creighton family’s home without a warrant. The Court held the right must be clearly established in a particularized sense, so that its contours would make the specific conduct’s unlawfulness apparent, and that an officer who reasonably but mistakenly believed a search was lawful is immune.

A protester was removed from a 1994 speech by Vice President Gore in San Francisco. The Court required lower courts to decide two questions in order: did the official violate a constitutional right, and if so, was that right clearly established. Deciding the first question every time kept constitutional law developing.

Alabama prison guards handcuffed Larry Hope, an incarcerated man, to a hitching post for seven hours in the sun with little water and no bathroom break. The Court denied the guards immunity, holding officials can be on notice that conduct is unconstitutional even when no earlier case had fundamentally similar facts.

A Washington officer shot Kenneth Haugen in the back as he tried to drive away. The Court held earlier cases did not clearly establish that the shooting violated the Fourth Amendment in that particular situation, and granted immunity.

Utah officers entered a home after an informant made a drug buy inside. A unanimous Court made Saucier’s order optional: judges may skip whether a right was violated and rule only that it was not clearly established.

School officials strip searched 13-year-old Savana Redding looking for prescription-strength ibuprofen. The Court held the search violated the Fourth Amendment, then granted the individual officials immunity because the law had not been clearly established.

An Oregon caseworker and deputy interviewed a 9-year-old girl at school about suspected abuse without a warrant or parental consent. The Court held officials who win on immunity can still seek review of the constitutional ruling against them, but found the case moot and vacated the Ninth Circuit’s Fourth Amendment holding without deciding it.

A U.S. citizen held as a material witness after 9/11 sued the former Attorney General. The Court granted immunity and said existing precedent must have placed the constitutional question “beyond debate,” language lower courts now cite constantly.

West Memphis, Arkansas officers fired 15 shots into a car at the end of a high-speed chase, killing driver Donald Rickard and passenger Kelly Allen. The Court unanimously held the shooting did not violate the Fourth Amendment and that the officers were also entitled to immunity.

Officers forced their way back into the room of Teresa Sheehan, a woman with a mental illness living in a group home, and shot her several times. The Court held no clearly established law barred the reentry and granted immunity, and dismissed the disability-discrimination question it had agreed to decide.

A Border Patrol agent standing in El Paso shot and killed 15-year-old Sergio Adrián Hernández Güereca across the border in Mexico. The Court held the Fifth Circuit erred by granting immunity based on facts the agent did not know at the time, because the inquiry looks only at what the officer knew.

A Tucson officer shot Amy Hughes, who was holding a kitchen knife and standing near another woman, within about a minute of arriving. The Court summarily reversed a denial of immunity. Justice Sotomayor, dissenting, warned the doctrine was becoming an absolute shield for police.

On remand, the Court held 5 to 4 that the family had no Bivens claim at all for a cross-border shooting, so the case ended without reaching immunity.

Texas prison staff held Trent Taylor, an incarcerated man, for six days in cells covered in feces and then in a frigid cell with sewage on the floor. Citing Hope, the Court held any reasonable officer should have known this was unconstitutional and denied immunity.

A Washington inn owner sued a Border Patrol agent for excessive force and retaliation. The Court refused to recognize a Bivens claim and signaled that courts should almost never extend Bivens to any new context.

A Vermont Capitol Police sergeant removed protester Shela Linton from a State House sit-in using a rear wristlock. The Second Circuit denied immunity based on its own 2004 precedent. The Court reversed, holding that precedent did not clearly establish the violation and that courts generally must identify a case with an officer acting in similar circumstances. Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson dissented.