The Ending Qualified Immunity Act and other bills: what Congress has tried

Qualified immunity is not in the Constitution, and it is not in the words of § 1983. It is a defense the Supreme Court read into the statute, beginning with Pierson v. Ray in 1967 and reshaped in Harlow v. Fitzgerald in 1982. That origin matters for reform, because what the Court built by interpreting a statute, Congress can remove by amending it. Our homepage and our analysis of Zorn v. Linton mention the Ending Qualified Immunity Act in a single line. This is the longer version: what each major bill would have done, who sponsored it, and how far it got, drawn from the bill texts and official records. We report what happened. We do not predict what will.

I.Why Congress can act at all

Section 1983 says that anyone who deprives a person of federal rights under color of state law “shall be liable to the party injured.” The statute contains no immunity. The Supreme Court supplied one, on the theory that Congress in 1871 meant to preserve defenses officials had at common law. Whether that theory was right is a live scholarly fight, covered in our piece on the missing words in Section 1983. For Congress, the fight does not need to be resolved. Lawmakers can simply write the rule they want into the statute.

Because § 1983 applies to state and local officials, a change to it would reach police officers, jail and prison staff, school officials, and others acting under state law. Federal officers are generally sued under different and narrower doctrines, which is why one current bill, discussed below, addresses a federal agency directly.

II.The bills at a glance

The table lists the major bills, using the bill texts published by the Government Publishing Office and the official records cited below. “Furthest action” is the furthest step we could verify; check each bill’s congress.gov page for any later activity.

III.The Ending Qualified Immunity Act

The Ending Qualified Immunity Act is the abolition bill. Its first version, H.R. 7085, was introduced in the House in June 2020 by Rep. Justin Amash, then a Libertarian from Michigan. Its cosponsors ran mostly to Democrats but included Rep. Tom McClintock, a California Republican, an early sign that skepticism of the doctrine was not confined to one party.

Rep. Ayanna Pressley took over the House bill in the 117th Congress as H.R. 1470, with Sen. Edward Markey sponsoring the Senate version, S. 492. Pressley reintroduced it as H.R. 2847 in April 2023. In the current 119th Congress, Markey introduced S. 1913 on May 22, 2025, joined by Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, and Pressley introduced H.R. 3602 the next day.

The operative text in the current versions adds a new subsection to § 1983. It provides that it “shall not be a defense” to an action that the defendant acted in good faith, believed the conduct was lawful, or that the rights at issue were not clearly established at the time, or that the law was too unsettled for the defendant to reasonably know whether the conduct was lawful. It would apply to cases pending on, or filed after, enactment. The bill also contains findings explaining that § 1983 never included a good-faith defense or a clearly-established requirement, and that Harlow replaced a subjective good-faith inquiry with the objective test courts use today.

IV.The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act

The broadest reform bill to get a vote was the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, sponsored by Rep. Karen Bass of California. Introduced in June 2020 as H.R. 7120, it passed the House on June 25, 2020, by a vote of 236 to 181. Its Senate companion, S. 3912, sponsored by Sen. Cory Booker, was referred to committee and went no further. The day before the House vote, a Senate Republican policing bill failed a procedural vote, 55 to 45, short of the 60 votes needed to proceed.

Bass reintroduced the bill in the next Congress as H.R. 1280. It passed the House on March 3, 2021, by 220 to 212, and was not taken up in the Senate. Its qualified-immunity provision was narrower than the stand-alone abolition bill: it applied to state and local law enforcement officers rather than to every official sued under § 1983. The bill also proposed changing the intent standard in the federal criminal civil-rights statute, 18 U.S.C. § 242, from “willfully” to a knowing or reckless standard.

V.The Senate talks that collapsed

After the House vote in 2021, negotiators from both parties, led by Bass, Booker, and Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, spent months trying to reach a compromise that could clear the Senate. Qualified immunity was one of the central disputes. In September 2021, the talks ended without an agreement. As the Washington Post reported at the time, Booker said the sides could not agree on qualified immunity, among other issues.

VI.A narrower model: the Reforming Qualified Immunity Act

Not every reform proposal abolishes the defense. In June 2020, Sen. Mike Braun of Indiana introduced S. 4036, the Reforming Qualified Immunity Act. Rather than eliminate immunity, it would have replaced the judge-made doctrine with a written one. An official sued individually would avoid liability only by showing either that the challenged conduct was specifically authorized or required by statute or regulation that no court had struck down, or that a court had already issued a final decision on the merits holding the same conduct lawful, and in either case that the official reasonably believed the conduct was constitutional. The bill was referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The record we reviewed shows no later action.

VII.What is pending in the current Congress

Three bills in the 119th Congress address qualified immunity directly, according to their published texts: Markey’s S. 1913 and Pressley’s H.R. 3602, which carry forward the Ending Qualified Immunity Act, and H.R. 4944, the Ending Qualified Immunity for ICE Agents Act, introduced on August 8, 2025, by Rep. Shri Thanedar of Michigan with Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois as cosponsor. That bill would provide that good faith and the absence of clearly established law are not defenses in suits against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, under § 1983 “or any other Federal law.” All three were referred to the Judiciary Committees. Any later action will appear on congress.gov, and readers can follow them there.

VIII.Abolishing the defense versus rewriting it

The bills divide into two families, and the difference is worth understanding before deciding what to ask a representative for.

• Abolition. The Ending Qualified Immunity Act removes the good-faith and clearly-established defenses entirely. A plaintiff would still have to prove that a constitutional right was actually violated; only the second, precedent-hunting prong would disappear. The Justice in Policing Act takes the same approach for state and local law enforcement.
• A statutory defense. Braun’s bill keeps a defense but defines it narrowly in the statute, tying it to specific legal authorization or a prior court ruling approving the same conduct, instead of leaving it to judges to decide what counts as clearly established.
• A good-faith defense. Before Harlow, the defense turned partly on an official’s subjective good faith, as the Ending Qualified Immunity Act’s own findings recount. The abolition bills explicitly rule out good faith as a defense, so a return to that older test would be a different policy choice.

None of these approaches decides who actually pays a judgment. That is a separate question, which we examine in Do Police Officers Pay for Misconduct Lawsuits? And Congress is not the only venue: several states have created their own civil-rights claims that exclude the defense, as we document in Which States Have Ended or Limited Qualified Immunity?

Editorial note: This analysis is built from congress.gov records, the cited statutes and opinions, and the reporting listed below. Bill statuses reflect congress.gov at the time of writing; check the linked records for later action. It is journalism and advocacy, not legal advice. If you believe your rights were violated, talk to a licensed civil-rights attorney in your state. Corrections: contact the editor.