A Cop's Lies Put Her in Jail for 2 years—Now She's Asking the Supreme Court for Justice

Hamdi Mohamud escaped war-torn Somalia when she was a child. As a teenager in Minnesota, she found herself caught in a web of well-documented lies and manipulation spun by St. Paul police officer Heather Weyker. In 2011, Weyker was deputized as part of a federal task force. At that time, the officer created outright lies to have Hamdi arrested and put in jail, even though Hamdi was innocent of any crime and Weyker had no reason to believe otherwise. Nonetheless, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Hamdi cannot sue Weyker for ruining so much of her life through her unconstitutional acts for one simple and outrageous reason: Weyker performed all her misdeeds while holding a federal badge.

If a state or local police officer took the same actions as Weyker, she could be held accountable for clearly violating Hamdi's constitutional rights. Although qualified immunity typically prevents victims from holding state and local officers answerable for rights violations, Weyker's acts were so egregious that qualified immunity could not shield her from a lawsuit. But because she was employed by the federal government—not a state or local government—the court let her off the hook.

This leaves Hamdi with no chance to take Weyker to court so a judge or a jury can decide if her actions violated the Constitution. That is all that Hamdi seeks with her case: the chance to bring Weyker to trial and prove her case in a court of law. But the court of appeals has given blanket, absolute immunity to rogue federal officers, like Weyker, and prevented them from potentially being held accountable for what they did to their innocent victims.

This absolute immunity for federal police officers makes no sense and violates the principle that where there is a right, there must be a remedy. That’s why, on August 6, 2021, the Institute for Justice (IJ) filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court asking it to reverse the decision in Hamdi's case.

Simply put, the courts have turned a federal badge into a shield against the Constitution, and that needs to change.