Making a Federal Case of IT: The Basics of Section 1983 Litigation [Pt. 2] (Presented by the Federal Bar Association’s Constitutional & Civil Rights Law Section and the Federal Judicial Law Clerk Committee)

Join the Constitutional & Civil Rights Law Section and the Federal Judicial Law Clerk Committee for this two-part series designed to provide current clerks and new civil litigators with the basics of federal Civil Rights Claims and defenses. Part Two of this two-part series will cover identifying and understanding entity, governmental, and individual immunities in federal civil rights litigation, including sovereign and Eleventh Amendment immunity, waiver and abrogation of sovereign immunity, state-law governmental immunities, and absolute individual immunities applicable to judicial, quasi-judicial, witness, civil-rights, government defense attorneys, prosecutors, probation officers, court clerks, and case workers. The program will also address qualified immunity, including the differences between raising qualified immunity at the motion-to-dismiss and summary-judgment stages, the immediate appealability of denials of qualified immunity in state and federal court, the requirements for establishing a violation of a constitutional or federal right and clearly established law, and pleading and defending against Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6) motions to dismiss, including how to successfully plead a federal civil rights case by establishing standing, naming the proper parties, alleging sufficient plausible facts, and seeking available relief.