US Supreme Court reverses in 9th Circuit qualified immunity case

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday summarily reversed without oral argument a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision on the qualified immunity of police officers, saying the appellate court misread its own precedent.

Seven justices said in a per curiam opinion that a three-judge circuit panel applied case law that was decided after the incident. The majority made note of a dissent by Judge Sandra S. Ikuta from the 9th Circuit's decision to not rehear the case en banc.

In doing so, the high court sided with an Arizona police officer who shot a woman four times after she failed to follow a command to drop a knife.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, wrote an impassioned dissent, arguing the majority misrepresented the fact patterns of precedent they cited. The high court's decision would send an "alarming signal" that police officers can "shoot first and think later," Sotomayor wrote.

The court was considering a case that addressed the shooting of Arizona resident Amy Hughes, who was reported in a 911 call to be acting erratically and hacking at a tree with a kitchen knife. Three responding police officers found Hughes standing next to her roommate with the knife, according to court documents.

The officers drew their guns and twice ordered Hughes to drop the knife. One officer, Andrew Kisela, fired when she did not comply with the commands. He shot four times in less than a minute.

Hughes survived and sued Kisela. The case was dismissed on summary judgment. In 2017, the 9th Circuit reversed that ruling.

In an opinion written by a district judge from Vermont sitting by designation, the 9th Circuit panel cited Deorle v. Rutherford, 272 F.3d 1272, 1282-83 (9th Cir. 2001), Glenn v. Washington Cty., 673 F.3d 864, 870 (9th Cir. 2011), and Harris v. Roderick, 126 F.3d 1189, 1204 (9th Cir. 1997), in determining that Hughes could continue with her suit.

The Supreme Court majority said on Monday that Deorle, which denied qualified immunity to an officer who shot at an unarmed mentally ill man, was inapplicable because Hughes was armed. Kisela v. Hughes, 17-467.

The high court said it had previously told the 9th Circuit "not to read its decision in that case too broadly."

The majority opinion also noted that Glenn was decided in 2011, a year after the shooting in question occurred, which meant that its precedent was not clearly established at that time.

"This court has 'repeatedly told courts -- and the Ninth Circuit in particular -- not to define clearly established law at a high level of generality,'" the majority wrote, critiquing generally the panel's inferences from the case law.

After the circuit panel decision was issued in 2017, the 9th Circuit voted not to rehear the case en banc.

In a dissent joined by six of her conservative colleagues on the court, Ikuta wrote that the ruling contravened Supreme Court case law.

She foreshadowed the high court's decision in the case, writing that the panel decision was contrary to "the Supreme Court's repeated directive not to frame clearly established law in excessive force cases at too high a level of generality."

She criticized the decision for failing to analyze the specifics of Kinsela's "split-second decision" in the context of the case.

The high court's majority opinion repeatedly cited that dissent in its reversal.

But Sotomayor expressed concerns that the court took the rare decision to issue a summary reversal, writing that the 9th Circuit "got it right." She also said that the majority "misapprehends the facts and misapplies the law, effectively treating qualified immunity as an absolute shield."

She said that the majority's analysis of Deorle in relation to the case before the high court was misleading, saying that Hughes was calm when speaking with her roommate and never raised the knife in any fashion, whereas the police fired in the Deorle incident after finding the subject holding a hatchet and a crossbow.

The officers shot him after he put down the weapons.

Sotomayor also noted that only one of the three officers who responded to the scene found it necessary to shoot at Hughes.

She then went on to express general concern about the Supreme Court's interpretation of qualified immunity cases.

"As I have previously noted, this court routinely displays an unflinching willingness 'to summarily reverse courts for wrongly denying officers the protection of qualified immunity' but 'rarely intervene[s] where courts wrongly afford officers the benefit of qualified immunity in these same cases,'" she wrote.

She then cited a law review article written by the late 9th Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt, who died last Thursday, in which he lambasted the case law behind qualified immunity -- a doctrine adopted by the courts through common law interpretation, rather than through legislative mandate -- as "foreclose[ing] the development of constitutional law in areas where such development is most needed."

Notably, Reinhardt wrote the majority opinion in Deorle.