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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

> When the SEC and teachers are capable of using the authority of the State to take my life with qualified immunity

Teachers are covered by QI just as much as cops, and there is much less past precedent on use of force by teachers. Since QI works on the principle of “the absence of precedent covering similar actors in similar circumstances and ruling it unlawful means you can't be held liable”, they probably are more able to do that covered by QI.

OTOH, they have less practical opportunity to apply force.

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Yes, in theory, teachers are covered by QI, however, in practice 2 things are different:

1 is that there are extremely few cases of QI for teachers, QI is used primarily by police officers

2 is that the unions don't back teachers that come up on QI charges. They don't run clinics on how to use QI to jutify harming someone or other clinics like Killology.

> 1 is that there are extremely few cases of QI for teachers, QI is used primarily by police officers

To the extent that's true, it's because people don't sue teachers personally as a way of getting some largely symbolic measure of justice for things that are actually crimes but where public prosecutors won't prosecute, because teachers don't benefit from the same working relationship with prosecutors that police have.

> 2 is that the unions don't back teachers that come up on QI charges

There are no such things as QI charges, and unions do, in fact, back teachers sued for discretionary acts, the space where QI applies. Which is why education groups have raised concerns about the pressure to end QI.

1. there is no reason to be pedantic about the language around QI. We are not in court, so you're not impressing anyone with your "actually" non-sense. Any reasonable person can infer that I was talking about cases in which QI would be used as a justification to absolve the officer of responsability.

2. Your first rebuttal point reinforces my point, in practice there are very few cases that result in QI being used w.r.t. teachers.

3. I think most of us can agree that QI shouldn't apply to teachers or officers or any other State actor and is legal non-sense created by junk judicial interpretation.

> Teacher are covered by QI just as much as cops, and there is much less past precedent on use of force by teachers.

Are they? I think it's hard to answer that question precisely, since qualified immunity is not a law that has been passed but a collection of judicial interpretations. Wikipedia says that it applies to 'government officials', and, even if one takes Wikipedia as definitive, it's not clear to me that that should apply to schoolteachers. The only real way to test whether qualified immunity applies to teachers would be to have it be used in a court case. Has it been?

> Are they?

The modern interpretation of QI, while all the current news coverage comes from police officers, comes from a case in which White House advisors in the Nixon Administration were being sued over their involvement in a defense contracting dispute, and applies to government employees exercising any discretionary functions, categorically.

> The only real way to test whether qualified immunity applies to teachers would be to have it be used in a court case. Has it been?

Yes. An extensive discussion relevant to public education, with some case citations, is here: https://mobile.edweek.org/c.jsp?cid=25919821&bcid=25919821&r...

It has, Safford Unified School District v. Redding is probably the canonical case here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safford_Unified_School_Distric...

Less opportunity to apply force but plenty to inflict lifelong damage.

Or at least massive opportunity cost and stunting or misdirection.

Teachers and police should be both way better paid and we should demand a lot more from both. These shouldn't be jobs you just get because they are easy(ish) to qualify for and have retirement and you can't ever get fired. We really need some of our best people in both.

If you think it is easy to become a teacher, boy do I have news for you.

It can't be too difficult based on many of those I had.

The difficulty to become a teacher is in no way correlated with the ability to teach.

What I was referring to was intelligence, not ability to teach.

And, factually, yes, it is pretty easy to become a teacher. Thanks for your opinion to the contrary though, I'll consider it.

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