A reasonable person might say that, scared or not, someone who plows a car into dozens of people in a street should be held accountable for their actions. But in the wake of recent protest movements including Black Lives Matter, authoritarian state legislators across the country have been working to legitimize the act of crashing a car into people on the street if those people happen to be protesting.
North Dakota started the trend in January, with a bill in the aftermath of protests at Standing Rock that aimed to shield drivers who killed protesters with their cars from criminal and civil liability if they exercised reasonable care. The bill narrowly failed in the North Dakota House. In February, Tennessee state representative Matthew Hill proposed a bill that would have also banned lawsuits against drivers who hit peaceful protesters; Hills bill died in committee. The Florida Senates iteration of the bill, introduced in February, meanwhile, simultaneously created a misdemeanor for someone who obstructs or interferes with the regular flow of vehicular traffic and barred lawsuits against drivers who unintentionally hit protesters. The burden of proof would have been on the protester who was hit by the car; that bill died in committee. Rhode Island had a similar bill introduced in March; a week later, it was held for further study.
Also in March, the North Carolina House of Representatives a body of officials who currently represent districts that have been ruled by federal courts to be illegally and racially gerrymandered passed a bill that would protect drivers who hit protesters from being sued by the victims, as Sarah Jones noted at The New Republic. A person driving an automobile who is exercising due care and injures another person who is participating in a protest or demonstration and is blocking traffic in a public right-of-way, is immune from civil liability for the injury, the bill says. Due care isnt defined in the proposal.
The bill, which could be taken up by the North Carolina Senate either this year or next, was aimed at protesters in Charlotte who shut down highways in nonviolent demonstrations after after a police officer shot and killed Keith Lamont Scott. These people are nuts to run in front of cars like they do, Rep. Michael Speciale said when North Carolina House passed the bill. If somebody does bump somebody, why should they be held liable?
Its not clear if all of these bills were part of some coordinated effort by a larger group or if legislators are simply cribbing ideas from each other, but either way, its not a coincidence. Interestingly, the original versions of the Tennessee, Rhode Island, and North Carolina bills all of which were introduced in February and March were strikingly similar, even down to the language used. All of the aforementioned bills were introduced by Republicans (although Rhode Islands had two Democratic cosponsors).
