George Floyd Justice in Policing Act

Renewed calls for passage of George Floyd Justice in Policing Act after fatal shooting of Black woman in her home

By Ray Sanchez

The law enforcement killing of Sonya Massey in her Illinois home earlier this month has thrust the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act back in the national spotlight, with renewed calls for passage of the failed legislation targeting racial bias and use of force.

Body-camera footage released Monday showed the fatal police shooting of the 36-year-old Black woman who had called 911 for help. A White sheriff’s deputy, Sean Grayson, now faces murder charges.

George Floyd, the act’s namesake, was another Black person killed by police. The 46-year-old died in police custody on May 25, 2020, after Derek Chauvin, a White police officer, was filmed kneeling on Floyd’s neck and back for nearly nine minutes as Floyd pleaded for help and said he couldn’t breathe.

Chauvin was convicted of murder and manslaughter in a state trial in 2021 and sentenced to more than 22 years in prison. He later pleaded guilty in federal court of depriving Floyd of his civil rights.

Floyd’s killing sparked a wave of protests around the world, along with a spate of legislative measures intended to address police brutality and racial bias.

But the Floyd bill, which was co-written by Vice President Kamala Harris when she was a senator, has languished for years amid wide partisan differences that are heightened today.

“I think the biggest impediment is, it’s an election year and Republicans control the House,” said Maria Ponomarenko, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin and co-founder and counsel at NYU’s Policing Project. “I’ve very little hope that this year there is much that could change the conversation until the election has passed.”

In response to Massey’s death, President Joe Biden and Harris this week called on Congress to pass the bill.

“In this moment, in honor of Sonya’s memory and the memory of so many more whose names we may never know, we must come together to achieve meaningful reforms that advance the safety of all communities,” Harris said in a statement Tuesday.

Here’s what you need to know about the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, what happened to it and its chances of passing.

What is the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act?

The legislation was originally introduced in 2020 and again in 2021. It would set up a national registry of police misconduct to prevent officers from evading consequences for their actions by moving to another jurisdiction.

The measure seeks to ban racial and religious profiling by law enforcement at the federal, state and local level. It would mandate an overhaul of a legal doctrine known as qualified immunity that critics claim shields law enforcement from accountability.

A 2021 fact sheet on the legislation said the measure would also allow “individuals to recover damages in civil court when law enforcement officers violate their constitutional rights by eliminating qualified immunity for law enforcement.”

The fact sheet also stated the legislation would “save lives by banning chokeholds and no-knock warrants” and would mandate “deadly force be used only as a last resort.”

What happened to the bill?

The bill twice cleared the House under Democratic control – in 2020 and 2021 – largely along party lines.

But it never went anywhere in the Senate, even after Democrats won control in 2021. Its failure to pass was attributed in part to disagreements about qualified immunity, CNN previously reported.

With the legislation stuck, Biden signed a more limited executive order to overhaul policing on the second anniversary of Floyd’s death. It mandated actions that are applicable to federal officers, including efforts to ban chokeholds, expand the use of body-worn cameras and restrict no-knock warrants, among other things.

But the president cannot mandate that local law enforcement adopt the measures. Instead, the executive order laid out actions the federal government can take, such as federal grants and technical assistance, to prompt local law enforcement to fall in line.

In May, Texas Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee – who died last Friday – reintroduced the bill days before the fourth anniversary of Floyd’s killing.

But policing reforms have not been a priority in a Congress where House Republicans are in the majority.

Does it stand a chance of passing now?

Any policing overhaul that can find support in a divided Congress will likely be stripped of crucial provisions opposed by Republicans and law enforcement groups, according to Ponomarenko and other experts.

“At this point, pretty much all of it would be a big sticking point,” Ponomarenko told CNN.

“In addition to limiting qualified immunity, the bill would have imposed a variety of data collection requirements on state and local agencies that receive federal grants. It would have established a federal police misconduct database to make it easier to track officers as they move from one agency to another. All of these are likely to be sufficiently controversial to preclude passage.”

This week, Illinois State Police released a 36-minute video of Massey’s encounter with the two Sangamon County sheriff’s deputies who responded to her house after midnight on July 6. Massey had called 911 to report a possible “prowler” at her home in Springfield, according to a court document filed by prosecutors.

In the video, which includes body-camera footage, Grayson and another deputy are seen initially speaking calmly with Massey when she goes to the stove to turn off a pot of boiling water. She then picks up the pot and the other deputy steps back – “away from your hot steaming water,” he says.

“I rebuke you in the name of Jesus,” she responds, repeating the phrase when the deputy asks, “Huh?”

“You better f**king not or I swear to God I’ll f**king shoot you in the f**king face,” Grayson says. Grayson then draws his firearm and points it at Massey, who ducks and apologizes while lifting the pot, the video shows. Both deputies yell, “Drop the f**king pot!”

Then, three shots are heard, and Massey is left in a pool of blood on her kitchen floor. After a few seconds of silence, one deputy says “shots fired” and calls for emergency medical services.

University of Chicago Law Professor Craig Futterman, founder and director of the school’s Civil Rights and Police Accountability Clinic, told CNN Massey’s killing was “yet another tragic death that clearly didn’t need to happen.”

It “dramatizes the importance of passing national reforms, the kinds of reforms that could prevent incidents like this from continuing to happen. It is just unfinished business,” Futterman said.

“This video is just simply horrifying,” he continued. “If this isn’t the sort of thing that moves people to act, to seek to pass some common sense reforms, it’s difficult to know what will.”