SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 
The Congress finds as follows: 
(1) In 1871, Congress passed the Ku Klux 
Klan Act to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment and 
combat rampant violations of civil and constitu-
tionally secured rights across the Nation, particu-
larly those of newly freed slaves and other Black 
Americans in the post-Civil War South 
(2) Included in the Act was a provision, now 
codified at section 1983 of title 42, United States 
Code, which provides a cause of action for persons 
to file lawsuits against people acting under color of 
State law, including State or local officials, who vio-
late their Federal legal and constitutionally secured 
rights. 
(3) Under section 1979 of the Revised Statutes 
(42 U.S.C. 1983) a person may be held liable for 
acting under color of State or local law, even if they 
are not acting in accordance with State law. 
(4) Section 1979 has never included a defense 
or immunity for government officials who act in 
good faith when violating rights, nor has it ever had 
a defense or immunity based on whether the right 
was ‘‘clearly established’’ at the time of the viola-
tion. 
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(5) From the law’s beginning in 1871, through 
the 1960s, government actors were not afforded 
qualified immunity for violating rights. 
(6) In 1967, the Supreme Court in Pierson v. 
Ray, 386 U.S. 547, suddenly found that government 
actors had a good faith defense for making arrests 
under unconstitutional statutes based on a common 
law defense for the tort of false arrest. 
(7) The Court later extended this beyond false 
arrests, turning it into a general good faith defense 
for government officials. 
(8) Finally, in Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 
800 (1982), the Court found the subjective search 
for good faith in the government actor unnecessary, 
and replaced it with an ‘‘objective reasonableness’’ 
standard that requires that the right be ‘‘clearly es-
tablished’’ at the time of the violation for the de-
fendant to be liable. 
(9) This doctrine of qualified immunity has se-
verely limited the ability of many plaintiffs to re-
cover damages under section 1983 when their rights 
have been violated by State and local officials. As a 
result, the intent of Congress in passing the law has 
been frustrated, and Americans’ rights secured by 
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the Constitution have not been appropriately pro-
tected. 
SEC. 3. SENSE OF THE CONGRESS. 
It is the sense of the Congress that we must correct 
the erroneous interpretation of section 1979 of the Revised 
Statutes which provides for qualified immunity, and reit-
erate the standard found on the face of the statute, which 
does not limit liability on the basis of the defendant’s good 
faith beliefs or on the basis that the right was not ‘‘clearly 
established’’ at the time of the violation. 
SEC. 4. REMOVAL OF QUALIFIED IMMUNITY. 
Section 1979 of the Revised Statutes (42 U.S.C. 
1983) is amended by adding at the end the following: ‘‘In 
any suit pending on, or filed after, the effective date of 
the Ending Qualified Immunity Act of 2021, it shall not 
be a defense or immunity to any action brought under this 
section that the defendant was acting in good faith, or 
that the defendant believed, reasonably or otherwise, that 
his or her conduct was lawful at the time when it was 
committed. Nor shall it be a defense or immunity that the 
rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitu-
tion or Federal laws were not clearly established at the 
time of their deprivation by the defendant, or that the 
state of the law was otherwise such that the defendant 
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could not reasonably have been expected to know whether 
his or her conduct was lawful.’’. 
Æ 
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