WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that law enforcement officers can’t be sued when they violate the rights of criminal suspects by failing to provide the familiar Miranda warning before questioning them.The justices ruled 6-3 in favor of a sheriff’s deputy who was sued after he failed to read a Miranda warning — "You have the right to remain silent," it begins — to a Los Angeles hospital worker accused of sexually assaulting a patient.The issue in the case was whether the warning given to criminal suspects before they talk to authorities, which the court recognized in its Miranda v.
Arizona decision in 1966 and reaffirmed 34 years later, is a constitutional right or something less important and less defined.Seated from left to right: Justices Samuel A.
Alito, Jr. and Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor Standing from left to right: Justices Brett M.
Kavanaugh, Elena Kagan, Neil M. Gorsuc (Fred Schilling, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States)Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his majority opinion that "a violation of Miranda is not itself a violation of the Fifth Amendment" and "we see no justification for expanding Miranda to confer a right to sue" under the federal law known as Section 1983.