SCOTUS to Consider Immunity of Police on Joint State-Federal Task Forces in Bungled Sex-Trafficking Prosecution

Later this month, the Supreme Court will consider a case arising out of a botched sex-trafficking investigation about whether state and local police officers enjoy immunity from lawsuits when they are federally cross-deputized as members of joint state-federal task forces.
Three young women, including Ifrah Yassin, are suing the Saint Paul, Minnesota, Police Department, claiming their Fourth Amendment rights were violated. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit ruled against them last July.
The petition in Yassin v. Weyker, court file 22-533, is scheduled to be considered by the justices on Feb. 17.
The case goes back to 2010 when Saint Paul Officer Heather Weyker claimed to have nabbed members of a child sex-trafficking ring that supposedly stretched over four states. Thirty people, almost all of whom were refugees from Somalia, were given jail terms, according to a New York Times summary….