Nahmod Law

The Supreme Court handed down City of Escondido v. Emmons, No. 17-1660 (per curiam), on January 7, 2019. In this qualified immunity excessive force case, the Court summarily reversed and once more chastised the Ninth Circuit for making the clearly settled law inquiry at too high a level of generality. What courts must instead do, the Court emphasized, is focus on the particular circumstances of the case and make the clearly settled law inquiry accordingly.

In Emmons, police officers had previously arrested a man after his wife called them to her apartment complaining of domestic violence. Thereafter, in the present case, police received a 911 call from the woman’s mother about another possible domestic violence incident at the apartment: the mother had heard yelling and screaming over the phone. When police arrived, they could not enter the apartment in order to make a welfare check (two children may have been in the apartment). After a few minutes of conversation between the police (from outside of the apartment) and the woman and an unidentified man, the plaintiff–who turned out to be the woman’s father–came out of the apartment and tried to brush past the officers. One of the officers then took him quickly to the ground and arrested him for the misdemeanor offense of resisting or delaying a police officer. The officer did not hit the plaintiff or display his weapon, and the police body camera video showed that the plaintiff was not in any pain.

The Ninth Circuit found that even though there was probable cause for the arrest, the officer may have violated clearly settled Fourth Amendment excessive force law and thus was not entitled to qualified immunity. It cited one of its own 2013 precedents, saying only that the right to be free of excessive force was clearly established in May 2013, when the events occurred.

The Supreme Court’s Summary Reversal

The Supreme Court summarily reversed, criticizing the Ninth Circuit for making the clearly settled law inquiry at too general a level. It also observed that the circuit precedent relied on by the Ninth Circuit involved the police use of force against individuals engaged in passive resistance, unlike this case. The Court thus remanded for a proper application of qualified immunity.

The result in Emmons is no surprise to those following the Supreme Court’s increasingly blunt warnings to the courts to apply qualified immunity with a good deal of specificity. Indeed, the Court in Emmons itself cited four of its recent qualified immunity decisions to that effect. (See, for example, my post on May 22, 2018, on Kisela v. Hughes, 138 S. Ct. — (2018)(per curiam): https://nahmodlaw.com/2018/05/22/kisela-v-hughes-another-predictable-supreme-court-excessive-force-qualified-immunity-decision/)

A Hidden and Disturbing Implication?

But what may be a bit of a shocker is what the Court tucked into its per curiam opinion almost in passing: it said that it assumed without deciding that a Court of Appeals decision can constitute clearly settled law for qualified immunity purposes. This is a rather remarkable statement to toss off so casually, since it has been assumed by courts and litigators for decades that in the absence of relevant Supreme Court case law (perhaps also in the absence of a clear circuit consensus to the contrary), a Court of Appeals decision can indeed constitute clearly settled law.

Consider the extreme implications of the Court’s statement: there can be no clearly settled law unless the Supreme Court has weighed in on the specific issue in comparable factual circumstances. Where the Supreme Court has not done so, qualified immunity must always be granted to defendants, thereby undermining individual section 1983 liability except in the most egregious cases. This cannot be correct.

I invite you to follow me on Twitter @NahmodLaw.