Channels, Fall 2017

Channels • 2017 • Volume 2 • Number 1 Page 69 with the word “every,” the Court expanded the standard for qualified immunity subtly but substantially. 88 Following cases reinforced this revision by quoting the alteration. 89 Through recent years, this expanded view of qualified immunity protection has guided Supreme Court cases. In City and County of San Francisco v. Sheehan (2015), police shot and killed a dangerous mentally-ill woman. In concluding that the officers were entitled to qualified immunity, the Court skirted both the legal questions pertaining to the Americans with Disabilities Act and the question of whether or not the officers’ actions violated the Fourth Amendment, stating, “...so long as ‘a reasonable officer could have believed that his conduct was justified,’ a plaintiff cannot ‘avoi[d] summary judgment by simply producing an expert's report that an officer's conduct leading up to a deadly confrontation was imprudent, inappropriate, or even reckless.’” 90 In Mullenix v. Luna (2015), the Court ruled in favor of qualified immunity for an officer who shot and killed a man instead of following orders to use a spike strip to stop his vehicle. Addressing only the question of qualified immunity and not the merits of the constitutional claim, the Court chastised lower courts for relying on “established law at a high level of generality” 91 and instead upheld an analysis “in light of the specific context of the case, not as a broad general proposition.” 92 This Court opinion also did not mention the § 1983 interest of upholding constitutional rights or remediating their violation. 93 In the case White v. Pauley (2017), the Court granted qualified immunity because plaintiffs had “failed to identify a case where an officer acting under similar circumstances as Officer White was held to have violated the Fourth Amendment.” 94 Yet, courts have used materials other than case law to determine that right was clearly established, leaving the questions of why a court should seek analogous precedent at all if there is a convincing reason that the officer was awarded fair notice that his actions would be illegal. 95 Nevertheless, decisions such as these as well as the “increasingly generous terms” applied to qualified immunity show a trend toward a broad view of qualified immunity protections. 96 88 Kit Kinports, "The Supreme Court's Quiet Expansion of Qualified Immunity," Minn. L. Rev. Headnotes 100, no. 62 (2016) at 65 ff. 89 See Reichle v. Howards , 132 S. Ct. 2088, 2093 (2012); Mullenix v. Luna , 136 S. Ct. 305, 308 (2015); and Taylor v. Barkes , 135 S. Ct. 2042, 2044 (2015). 90 City and County of San Francisco v. Sheehan at 1777 (2015) (quoting Billington v. Smith , 292 F.3d 1177 (C.A.9 2002)). 91 Mullenix v. Luna , 136 S. Ct. 305, 308 (2015). 92 Mullenix v. Luna at 308 (quoting Brosseau v. Haugen , 543 U.S. 194, 198, (2004), which in turn was quoting Saucier v. Katz , 533 U.S. 194, 201 (2001)). 93 Kinports at 68. 94 White v. Pauley , 580 U.S. __ (2017). (Slip opinion at page 6). 95 Meltzer at 1295ff. 96 Kinports at 64. (“In a number of recent rulings, the Court has engaged in a pattern of covertly broadening the defense, describing it in increasingly generous terms and inexplicably adding qualifiers to precedent that then take on a life of their own. This pattern began in 2011 with Ashcroft v. al-Kidd and continued with last Term’s decisions in City and County of San Francisco v. Sheehan and Heien v. North Carolina .”).