Justices To Decide Suit Against Idaho Officials Can State Appeal Judge’s Denial Of Immunity Before Case Tried?

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to use a former Idaho state employee’s lawsuit to decide how quickly government officials sued in state courts may appeal a denial of immunity.

The justices will decide by July whether a state trial judge’s refusal to shield officials from being sued under a commonly used civil rights law can be appealed immediately - before a trial goes forward.

State courts have split on the issue and the Idaho Supreme Court is one of those that has barred such immediate appeals.

Thirty-two states joined in a friend-of-the-court brief supporting an appeal Idaho Attorney General Alan Lance filed with the nation’s highest court.

“Qualified immunity is a critical defense … State governments cannot afford to have this defense extinguished,” the states argued.

Government officials often are shielded from legal liability for their official acts by the doctrine of sovereign immunity. Such a shield is available when no clearly established constitutional or federal right was violated.

Kristine Fankell sued four officials of the Idaho State Liquor Dispensary after she was fired from her job at a North Idaho liquor store in 1993.

Her state court lawsuit accused the four officials, among other things, of violating her rights as protected by an 1871 federal law. She sought monetary damages.

The four officials invoked qualified immunity in seeking to have the lawsuit thrown out, but 1st District Judge James Michaud in Sandpoint refused to dismiss the case.

When the officials sought to appeal that ruling before trial, the Idaho Supreme Court’s clerk said such an appeal could not be heard by the state’s highest court because it was not a final judgment.

In the appeal acted on Monday, the state’s lawyers argued that there is a federally protected right to file such an immediate appeal, no matter what a state’s procedural laws may say.

The four Idaho officials who were sued by Fankell are Marian Johnson, Gordon Hubbard, Margo Edmiston and H. Dean Summers.