The asphalt on a June night retains the daytime heat, radiating it back up through the soles of your shoes. In 2020, that heat was different. It felt heavy, thick with the scent of exhaust, sweat, and a collective, breathless tension. If you were standing on the streets of Denver during those volatile weeks of protest following the death of George Floyd, the air felt less like oxygen and more like kindling. One spark was all it took.
For Jared Glanz-Berger, that spark arrived in the form of a pepper ball.
He was not throwing bricks. He was not smashing windows. By all accounts in the legal record, he was simply standing there, documenting the chaos of a city fracturing at the seams. Then came the flash, the impact, and the blinding pain. A projectile fired by a Denver police officer struck him, leaving physical and psychological scars that would take years to heal.
But the real battle did not end when the smoke cleared from the Denver streets. It shifted from the concrete to the quiet, carpeted hallways of the American judicial system. It became a war over a legal doctrine most citizens have never heard of, though it shapes every single interaction they will ever have with law enforcement.
Qualified immunity.
Two words. A legal shield created by judges, for judges, designed to protect government officials from frivolous lawsuits. In practice, however, it has grown into something far more formidable. For decades, it has acted as an almost impenetrable suit of armor, protecting police officers from accountability even when they violate the constitutional rights of the citizens they are sworn to protect.
Until now.
In a quiet but monumental shift, the Supreme Court of the United States refused to step in and save the officer who fired that shot. By denying the officer’s petition to toss out Glanz-Berger’s excessive force lawsuit, the highest court in the land sent a tremor through the legal landscape. The shield did not shatter completely. But it cracked.
The Invisible Anatomy of a Right
To understand why this matters, you have to understand the absurd, upside-down world of civil rights litigation in America.
Imagine you are driving down the street, and a police officer pulls you over. For no justifiable reason, the officer smashes your window, drags you out, and confiscates your phone because you were recording them. Your Fourth Amendment rights have been violated. You decide to sue.
In a normal court case, you would prove the officer acted unreasonably. But under the doctrine of qualified immunity, the calculus changes entirely. The court does not just ask, "Did the officer violate your rights?" It asks a second, much more agonizing question: "Was that right clearly established at the time of the incident?"
What does "clearly established" mean? It means you, the victim, must find a previous court case that occurred in the exact same jurisdiction, involving nearly identical facts.
Consider how this plays out in the real world. In past cases across the country, courts have ruled that officers were immune from lawsuits because, while a previous case established it was illegal to unleash a police dog on a surrendering suspect who was lying down, it had not been "clearly established" that it was illegal to unleash a dog on a surrendering suspect who was sitting down.
Identical harm. Different posture. Case dismissed.
It is a Kafkaesque loop that leaves victims of police brutality stranded in a legal wasteland. It tells citizens that their constitutional rights only exist if someone else has already suffered the exact same abuse in the exact same way.
In the Denver case, Officer Jonathan Christian argued that he deserved this shield. He claimed that during the unpredictable chaos of a mass protest, his decision to deploy pepper balls was a split-second judgment call meant to maintain order. He argued that there was no "clearly established" law explicitly stating he could not use such force against a non-threatening bystander in the middle of a riotous crowd.
The lower courts looked at the evidence and balked. They noted that Glanz-Berger was standing apart from the crowd, posing no threat, and attempting to comply with dispersal orders. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a jury should decide whether the force used was excessive.
Officer Christian appealed to the Supreme Court, hoping the justices would reinforce his armor.
They declined.
The Weight of the Badge and the Burden of the Citizen
There is a profound vulnerability in realizing that the structures built to protect you can be used to silence you. Anyone who has ever stood in a crowd facing a line of riot police knows the primal fear that comes with it. You see the helmets, the shields, the batons, and the kinetic weapons. You realize, in a flash of adrenaline, that the power dynamic is entirely asymmetrical.
The state holds a monopoly on violence. We agree to this social contract because we believe that violence will be governed by strict rules, by reason, and by the Constitution.
When those rules are broken, civil lawsuits are often the only tool citizens have left. Criminal charges against officers are vanishingly rare. Internal affairs investigations frequently result in a slap on the wrist. A civil rights lawsuit under Section 1983—a Reconstruction-era law designed to protect citizens from state-sanctioned violence—is the lonely outpost of accountability.
But qualified immunity has turned that outpost into a fortress for the defense.
Proponents of the doctrine argue that without it, police officers would be paralyzed by the fear of being sued for every split-second decision. They argue that the profession would become untenable, that good men and women would leave the force, and that communities would be left unprotected. They paint a picture of a society where officers are personally bankrupted by career-ending lawsuits for honest mistakes made in high-stress environments.
It is a compelling argument. It is also largely a myth.
In reality, police officers almost never pay a single dime out of their own pockets in civil rights lawsuits. A landmark study by law professor Joanna Schwartz analyzed dozens of police departments across the country and found that governments indemnified officers in approximately 99.6% of cases. The taxpayers foot the bill. The officer’s personal savings remain untouched.
What qualified immunity actually protects is not the officer's wallet, but the officer's record. It prevents the case from ever going to trial. It prevents a jury of ordinary citizens from looking at the evidence, listening to the testimony, and deciding what is right.
The Changing Current
The Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the Denver officer’s appeal is not an isolated event. It is part of a slow, grinding shift in how the judiciary views state power.
For years, the high court expanded qualified immunity, making the shield thicker and more impenetrable with every term. But public consciousness has shifted. The summer of 2020 exposed the deep fractures in the system to millions of people who had previously been blind to them. The legal community, from progressive civil rights attorneys to conservative libertarians, began to unite against the doctrine, arguing that it undermines the rule of law itself.
How can a citizen respect the law when the law refuses to hold its own enforcers accountable?
The justices seem to be listening, even if they are moving with glacial slowness. By letting the lower court's ruling stand in the Denver case, the Supreme Court allowed a vital precedent to remain intact. It signaled that officers cannot simply invoke the word "protest" or "chaos" as a blank check to bypass the Fourth Amendment.
This brings us back to the human core of the matter. Jared Glanz-Berger’s lawsuit will now move forward. A jury will finally have the opportunity to hear his story, to look at the photos of his injuries, and to weigh the actions of the officer who pulled the trigger.
This is not about being anti-police. It is about being pro-accountability. It is about acknowledging that the badge carries an immense burden of responsibility. When an ordinary citizen makes a reckless mistake that injures someone, they are held liable. When a professional backed by the full power of the state makes a reckless mistake, the standard should be higher, not lower.
The road ahead is long. Qualified immunity remains the law of the land, and the Supreme Court has shown no appetite for striking it down entirely. Congress has repeatedly flubbed the opportunity to reform the doctrine through legislation, bogged down by partisan bickering and political posturing.
But justice is rarely achieved in a single, sweeping moment. It is carved out piece by piece, case by case, on the hot asphalt of American cities and in the quiet determination of individuals who refuse to be silenced.
The summer night in Denver is long gone, but the ripples of what happened on those streets are still moving through the highest halls of power. A man was hurt. He stood up. And for once, the highest court in the nation chose not to stand in his way.
