Filarsky v. Delia
The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that a private attorney hired by a city to conduct an employee investigation can seek qualified immunity from a civil rights lawsuit, just like a full-time government worker doing the same job.
The decision means that governments can hire outside specialists for particular tasks without exposing those specialists to greater legal risk than the government's own employees face for identical work.
“Government at that time was smaller in both size and reach, had fewer responsibilities, and operated primarily at the local level.”
Describing why the 19th-century common law didn't distinguish full-time officials from part-time government workers.
How it got here: A federal trial court granted qualified immunity to all defendants; the Ninth Circuit affirmed for city employees but denied immunity to the private attorney, who then appealed to the Supreme Court.
The Case in Depth
What happened
A firefighter for the City of Rialto, California missed work due to illness. Suspicious, the city investigated and hired a private employment lawyer to question him about construction supplies he had purchased. When the firefighter refused to let officials into his home, the lawyer ordered him to bring the materials outside for inspection, prompting a civil rights lawsuit against the city and the lawyer personally.
The question before the Court
Can a private lawyer hired temporarily by a city to help run an internal investigation claim the same qualified immunity a full-time government employee could claim?
The Court's answer
Yes — a private individual hired temporarily by a government body to carry out its work can seek qualified immunity in a §1983 lawsuit, just as a full-time government employee could. The Court found that 19th-century common law, which §1983 incorporated, never distinguished between permanent officials and part-time or one-off private helpers when granting protection from personal-liability suits for government work.
The Court also found that the practical reasons for granting immunity — avoiding excessive caution by people doing government business, attracting skilled outside help, and shielding government functions from distracting lawsuits — apply equally whether the person is a full-time employee or an outside specialist like the attorney here. The ruling only makes him eligible to raise the immunity defense; whether he actually wins it depends on further proceedings below.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Governments — especially small cities and towns without large staffs — regularly hire outside lawyers, doctors, engineers, and other specialists to carry out official duties. This ruling means those contractors can defend themselves the same way government employees do, making it easier for cash-strapped local governments to bring in outside expertise without deterring qualified people from taking the work.
What changes now
The case is sent back to the lower courts, where the private attorney may still argue that he did not violate a clearly established constitutional right — the separate showing needed to actually win qualified immunity. The ruling itself only decides that he is eligible to make that argument; it does not decide whether his conduct was ultimately lawful.
What this does not decide
The Court decided only that private individuals hired to do government work may seek qualified immunity — not that Filarsky actually deserves it. Whether his conduct violated a clearly established right is left for the lower courts to decide on remand, as Justice Ginsburg's concurrence stresses.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Ginsburg
Justice Ginsburg agreed that the attorney is eligible to seek qualified immunity but emphasized that immunity can still be overcome if he violated a clearly established right. She pointed to Ninth Circuit findings that Delia's compliance with the inspection order was coerced by threats of discipline or termination, and urged the Court of Appeals to address on remand whether ordering someone to produce belongings from their home circumvents the warrant requirement and whether threatening discipline to extract a waiver of constitutional rights violates clearly established law.
Concurrence — Justice Sotomayor
Justice Sotomayor joined the majority but clarified that not every private individual who does any work for the government automatically gets qualified immunity — each case must still satisfy the ordinary common-law-and-purposes test. She noted the attorney qualified partly because he worked closely with and alongside immune government employees, but stressed that other categories of private actors, such as independent special prosecutors, should be evaluated case by case rather than under a single fixed rule.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court looked to how the common law in 1871, when the civil-rights statute at issue (42 U.S.C. §1983) was enacted, treated people who did government work without being full-time public employees.
- It found that 19th-century government relied heavily on private citizens performing public duties part-time — postmasters who ran general stores, private lawyers who prosecuted criminal cases, justices of the peace who kept private law practices — and that the common law extended the same legal protections to these part-timers as to full-time officials.
- Because courts read §1983 in harmony with these common-law immunity principles unless Congress clearly meant to eliminate them, the Court concluded that immunity under the statute should not depend on whether someone works for the government full-time, part-time, or on a single assignment.
- The Court then checked this conclusion against the reasons it has previously given for immunity — avoiding excessive caution in public servants, attracting talented people to government work, and shielding government functions from the distraction of lawsuits — and found all of these reasons applied equally to temporary private workers doing government business.
- The Court distinguished two prior cases that had denied immunity to private actors: one involved people using government processes for purely private gain with no public duty, and the other involved private prison guards operating with market-based incentives that already checked the concerns immunity is meant to address; neither situation matched an attorney directly retained to carry out a specific government investigation.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Distinguishes Wyatt v. Cole (504 U. S. 158)
The Court said that case involved private parties pursuing purely private ends, unlike a lawyer doing genuine government work.
Distinguishes Richardson v. McKnight (521 U. S. 399)
The Court said that case's denial of immunity to privately run prison guards was a narrow ruling that doesn't apply to a temporary government investigator.