FORT SMITH, Ark. – The lawsuit filed by the widow of the late Little Rock Airport Director Bryan Malinowski had another development Monday when the judge in the case issued a ruling.
United States District Court Judge Lee P. Rudofsky ruled that a claim against the 10 ATF agents involved in executing the March 19, 2024 search warrant leading to the deadly shooting of Malinowski could not be brought for violating the Constitution. The filing against the agents, called a Bivens claim, stemmed from a 1971 case that permitted the naming of individual government agents for constitutional violations.
Widow of former Little Rock airport executive Bryan Malinowski sues ATF over deadly 2024 raid shooting
A 2022 case before the U.S. Supreme Court narrowed the grounds under which a Bivens claim could be filed. Rudofsky wrote how post-2022 changes have affected the legal standard in his ruling: “The Court is well aware of how frustrating the modern Supreme Court precedent must be for plaintiffs that have experienced a significant violation of their constitutional rights by federal officials. The precedent holds out what almost always ends up being the false hope of a successful Bivens action.”
In a footnote, Rudofsky wrote about the “continuously-narrowing-without-ever-overruling approach to Bivens” by the Supreme Court…