1. Short title This Act may be cited as the Ending Qualified Immunity Act . 2. Findings The Congress finds as follows: (1) In 1871, Congress passed the Ku Klux Klan Act to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment and combat rampant violations of civil and constitutionally secured rights across the Nation, particularly those of newly freed slaves and other Black Americans in the post-Civil War South. (2) Included in the Act was a provision, now codified at section 1983 of title 42, United States Code, which provides a cause of action for persons to file lawsuits against people acting under color of State law, including State or local officials, who violate their Federal legal and constitutionally secured rights. (3) Under section 1979 of the Revised Statutes ( 42 U.S.C. 1983 ) a person may be held liable for acting under color of State or local law, even if they are not acting in accordance with State law. (4) Section 1979 has never included a defense or immunity for government officials who act in good faith when violating rights, nor has it ever had a defense or immunity based on whether the right was clearly established at the time of the violation. (5) From the law's beginning in 1871, through the 1960s, government actors were not afforded qualified immunity for violating rights. (6) In 1967, the Supreme Court in Pierson v. Ray, 386 U.S. 547, suddenly found that government actors had a good faith defense for making arrests under unconstitutional statutes based on a common law defense for the tort of false arrest. (7) The Court later extended this beyond false arrests, turning it into a general good faith defense for government officials. (8) Finally, in Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800 (1982), the Court found the subjective search for good faith in the government actor unnecessary, and replaced it with an objective reasonableness standard that requires that the right be clearly established at the time of the violation for the defendant to be liable. (9) This doctrine of qualified immunity has severely limited the