Profs & Pints DC: Is ICE above the Law?

Summary

Profs and Pints DC presents: “Is ICE Above the Law?” An examination of the federal officer accountability crisis and of unconstitutional and unchecked assertions of power, with Scott Michelman, legal director of ACLU-D.C. and lecturer on law and Shikes Fellow in Civil Liberties and Civil Rights at Harvard Law School.

The Trump administration has encouraged Immigration and Customs Enforcement members and other federal agents to commit horrifying abuses based on claims that they have “absolute immunity.” The results have been devastating. Renee Good, Alex Pretti, Ruben Ray Martinez, and Keith Porter Jr. are all dead at the hands of federal agents, and countless more have been subjected to needless violence and trauma.

A recent ACLU and YouGov poll showed that 93 percent of voters—including 89 percent of Trump voters—believe that federal agents should not be above the law. What many Americans don’t know is just how difficult it can be to hold federal officers accountable when they violate constitutional rights.

Join Scott Michelman, legal scholar and ACLU-D.C. legal director, for a deep dive into why it’s so difficult for most ordinary people to seek justice from federal agents and what can be done about it.

He’ll discuss legal precedents that limit the ability of ordinary people to seek justice. Although the Supreme Court had held for most of the past half-century that federal officers should be suable just like their state counterparts, it reversed course in a series of cases over the last 10 years, declaring in 2017 that permitting suits against federal officers was a “disfavored judicial activity” that courts should almost never allow because Congress has not specifically provided for such suits.

You’ll learn about the ramifications of an alarming accountability gap between federal and state officers. For example, after Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd in 2020, Mr. Floyd’s family sued the City of Minneapolis and police officers for violating his constitutional rights and secured a $27 million settlement. Federal law, however, does not allow the families of Alex Pretti and Renee Good to file that type of lawsuit against the federal agents who shot and killed them just miles from where Mr. Floyd was murdered.

You’ll learn how federal and local lawmakers can fix this problem. Potential federal remedies include reform bills pending in Congress right now, such as the Constitutional Accountability Act. At the local level, the District of Columbia could pass a law authorizing federal officer suits for constitutional violations.

Finally, we'll talk about what people in D.C. and across the country can do to push for meaningful reform.

(Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

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Scott Michelman

Legal Director

Scott Michelman is the Legal Director of the ACLU of the District of Columbia. Scott has litigated a broad range of civil rights and civil liberties issues, including access to the courts, disability rights, discrimination and selective enforcement, federal officer accountability, freedom of speech and press, habeas corpus, immigrants’ rights, judicial secrecy, LGBTQ+ rights, police misconduct, political protest, post-September 11 abuse of executive power, prisoners' rights, privacy rights, religious freedom, reproductive freedom, the rights of medical marijuana patients, sentencing law, and unreasonable search and seizure. He has also litigated cases about class action law, consumers’ rights, and workers’ rights. Scott has argued before the United States Supreme Court, the highest courts of the District of Columbia and Massachusetts, the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Second, Third, Fourth, Sixth, Ninth, Tenth and D.C. Circuits, and numerous other federal and state courts around the country. Additionally, Scott is Shikes Fellow in Civil Liberties and Civil Rights and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, where he has been invited to teach Civil Rights Litigation for more than a dozen years. He has previously taught as clinical or adjunct faculty at American University Washington College of Law, Santa Clara Law School, Seton Hall Law School, and the University of California at Santa Cruz. Scott is the author of the law school textbook Civil Rights Enforcement (Aspen, 3d. ed. forthcoming 2026). In connection with his practice, Scott has been quoted by national radio, television, and print media outlets, including NPR, CNN, MSNBC/MSNow, Fox News, Democracy Now, Al Jazeera, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, Reuters, USA Today, U.S. News and World Report, The Guardian, ProPublica, The New Yorker, Newsweek, Politico, Buzzfeed, and The National Law Journal, and his commentary and opinion have appeared in SCOTUSblog, Slate, and The Wall Street Journal, among others. His legal scholarship includes The Branch Best Qualified To Abolish Immunity, 93 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1999 (2018); Doing Kimbrough Justice: Implementing Policy Disagreements With the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, 45 Suffolk L. Rev. 1083 (2012) (with Jay Rorty); and Who Can Sue Over Government Surveillance? 57 UCLA L. Rev. 71 (2009), reprinted in 26 Saltzman & Wolvovitz, Civil Rights Litigation & Attorney Fees Annual Handbook 79 (2010). Before joining the ACLU-DC in 2016, Scott was an attorney with Public Citizen Litigation Group and before that the ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review, and he went on to clerk for the Honorable Betty B. Fletcher of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. A member of the British royal family once broke his thumb playing football under Scott’s supervision. Important disclaimer: Communicating with us through this website does not create an attorney-client relationship; only a signed agreement can create such a relationship. Additionally, past success is no guarantee of future results, even if we agree to represent you.

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