Qualified immunity isn't an easy concept to grasp. There isn't an elevator pitch. It's pretty involved. But let's start with this: Every person in the United States has rights that are protected. Also true is the fact that governments have made themselves and their 'agents' somewhat invincible when it comes to lawsuits. Recall that this country supposedly wanted to break up with King George III, in part because he was unaccountable; he was immune from prosecution. Our bewigged forebears didn't like that. It's known as sovereign immunity , and it's part of why they dumped him. However, when the chips were down and the quill pens were out, the ancestral legislators of the so-called Land of the Free decided that well, maybe a little immunity wasn't such a bad thing for them, as a government. And so, they put sovereign immunity into the Constitution. There's a little YouTube primer here . Then the states put sovereign immunity into their stat...
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