In May 2020, George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer, sparking the largest racial justice protests in American history. Millions of Americans marched. The demand was clear: reform policing.

Congress responded. The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act passed the House in June 2020 and again in March 2021. The bill would have ended qualified immunity (the legal doctrine that shields police officers from civil lawsuits for misconduct), banned chokeholds and no-knock warrants at the federal level, created a national registry of police misconduct, and restricted the transfer of military equipment to local police departments.

Mitch McConnell called the bill "not a serious effort" and refused to allow a vote.

How It Harmed Americans:

Qualified immunity remains intact, meaning victims of police misconduct — including families of people killed by police — still face enormous barriers to holding officers accountable in court. There is still no national police misconduct registry, so officers fired for misconduct in one jurisdiction can simply get hired in another. Chokeholds and no-knock warrants continue to kill.

The bipartisan talks that followed produced no deal. Without federal reform, the patchwork of state and local policies — most unchanged — continues to produce the same tragic outcomes. Police killed over 1,200 people in 2023 alone, disproportionately Black Americans.

Reference List:

• H.R. 7120 / H.R. 1280, George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, 116th and 117th Congress

• Campaign Zero, "Mapping Police Violence" database

• Reuters, "Qualified Immunity: How It Works and Why It Matters" (2020)

• Washington Post, "Fatal Force" police shooting database