Qualified Immunity NAPI argues that in the absence of a showing of bad faith and gross negligence, an official who violates a person’s rights guaranteed by the Navajo Nation Bill of Rights is entitled to qualified immunity.

Individual Navajo Nation officials are entitled to qualified immunity if “their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.” Harlow v.

Qualified immunity is an affirmative defense which must be explicitly pleaded in the answer to provide notice to all parties. NAPI waived this argument because it failed to do so.

The issue of qualified immunity, raised by the Defendant, turns on the “objective legal reasonableness of the action, assessed in light of the legal rules that were clearly established at the time it was taken.” Pearson v.