WA: No clear authority on community caretaker entry of home for § 1983 case so officers have qualified immunity

The entry into plaintiff’s home under the community caretaking function to retrieve weapons was not clearly unconstitutional, so the officers have qualified immunity. SCOTUS has yet to speak to it. Feis v. King County Sheriff’s Dep’t, 165 Wn. App. 525, 267 P.3d 1022 (2011)*:

¶32 At the time of Feis’s arrest, the question of whether community caretaking could justify a warrantless entry of Feis’s home under the circumstances attendant to this particular type of domestic dispute was not clearly established beyond debate. “Where no controlling authority specifically prohibits a defendant’s conduct, and when the federal circuit courts are split on the issue, the law cannot be said to be clearly established.” Morgan, 659 F.3d at 372 (citing Wilson v. Layne, 526 U.S. 603, 617-18, 119 S. Ct. 1692, 143 L. Ed. 2d 818 (1999)). Since Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U.S. 433, 93 S. Ct. 2523, 37 L. Ed. 2d 706 (1973), wherein the Court foreshadowed the current uncertainty regarding community caretaking by discussing the “constitutional difference” between vehicles and houses, the Supreme Court has not elaborated on whether or when the community caretaking exception may justify warrantless entry into a home. Cady, 413 U.S. at 441; see United States v. Gillespie, 332 F. Supp. 2d 923, 929 (W.D. Va. 2004). As a result, the federal circuits are not in agreement on the precise contours of the community caretaking exception. See Ray v. Township of Warren, 626 F.3d 170, 175-76 (3rd Cir. 2010) (“There is some confusion among the circuits as to whether the community caretaking exception set forth in Cady applies to warrantless searches of the home.”). Some federal courts condone resort to the community caretaking exception as an independent justification for a warrantless search of a private residence, while others do not. Because the extent, scope, and applicability of the community caretaking doctrine itself was not settled at the time of the search of Feis’s home, the law was certainly not clearly established such that the deputies’ actions here were unlawful beyond debate.