Background
Plaintiff Joy Scherer sued Los Angeles Police Department officers Wessam Ismail and Nelson Martinez for First Amendment retaliation under Section nineteen eighty-three. The officers appealed a district court order denying their motion to dismiss based on qualified immunity. In a prior appeal, the Ninth Circuit reversed a dismissal for failure to state a claim, remanding the case for the district court to address qualified immunity.
The court’s reasoning
The court held that the law was not clearly established at the time of the officers’ conduct. The district court relied on principles articulated at too high a level of generality. The cited precedents involved different contexts, such as prison officials and agency investigations, and did not squarely govern the specific facts of a police officer responding to a domestic assault. The court found no obvious case where the unlawfulness was clear despite the lack of similar precedent.
It is not enough that a rule be suggested by then-existing precedent; the rule’s contours must be so well defined that it is clear to a reasonable officer that his conduct was unlawful in the situation he confronted.
District of Columbia v. Wesby, 583 U.S. 48, 63 (2018)
The dissent
The majority today immunizes a police officer who threatened to arrest a domestic violence victim for attempting to press charges against her attacker.
Nguyen
What it means going forward
Police officers are shielded from liability for statements made during domestic violence responses unless the specific unlawfulness of their conduct was clearly established by prior case law with nearly identical facts.
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