Justices Consider Hurdles to Civil Rights Suit in State Courts

The US Supreme Court will consider what steps parties must take before they can bring civil rights suits against government officials in state courts.

The dispute the justices agreed to hear Friday involves what Alabama residents called “extreme delays” in processing their state unemployment benefits during the Covid pandemic.

“Alabamians filed nearly 1.5 million such applications with the Department between April 2020 and March 2022, far above the 737 applications that had been filed in May 2019, before the onset of COVID-19,” the state Supreme Court said.

To jump-start the process, several of those applicants sued state officials under a ...