{"id":49627,"date":"2021-09-11T16:09:19","date_gmt":"2021-09-11T21:09:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=49627"},"modified":"2021-09-11T16:09:19","modified_gmt":"2021-09-11T21:09:19","slug":"ca6-arrest-was-reasonable-based-on-reasonable-mistake-of-law-or-fact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=49627","title":{"rendered":"CA6: Arrest was reasonable based on reasonable mistake of law or fact"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The officers here had a reasonable basis for arresting plaintiff for obstruction of an officer, whether it was based on a reasonable mistake of fact or of law. And that plays into qualified immunity. Barrera v. City of Mount Pleasant<\/a>, 20-1863 (6th Cir. Sept. 3, 2021):<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The officers directly observed Barrera’s refusal to identify himself when ordered to do so. No one doubts what he did. What the parties debate is whether the relevant state law, a Michigan statute, criminalizes this conduct.<\/p>

That reality introduces an analytical complication, one that requires a brief digression. What part of the qualified immunity inquiry does a dispute over the meaning of a state law implicate? The first question: Did the officers violate the citizen’s constitutional right? Or the second one: Did the officers violate a clearly established right? Both are in play, it seems to us, and either one permits a federal court to resolve a qualified-immunity defense without deciding exactly what the state law means.<\/p>

One possibility is that a constitutional violation never arises in the first place because, even if the officers misread state law, the mistake was a reasonable one. Just as a reasonable mistake of fact does not violate an individual’s Fourth Amendment rights, so a reasonable mistake of law does not violate them either.<\/p>

Heien v. North Carolina illustrates the point. 574 U.S. 54, 66, 135 S.Ct. 530, 190 L.Ed.2d 475 (2014). Officers mistook whether North Carolina law required one brake light or both of them to be in working order. Even so, the Court held that \u201creasonable suspicion can rest on a mistaken understanding of the scope of a legal prohibition.\u201d Id. at 60, 135 S.Ct. 530. \u201cTo be reasonable is not to be perfect,\u201d the Court explained, \u201cand so the Fourth Amendment allows for some mistakes on the part of government officials, giving them \u2018fair leeway for enforcing the law in the community’s protection.\u2019 \u201d Id. at 60\u201361, 135 S.Ct. 530 (quoting Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160, 176, 69 S.Ct. 1302, 93 L.Ed. 1879 (1949)). A law may prohibit \u201cvehicles\u201d in the park and the state courts eventually will finally resolve whether it \u201ccovers Segways or not,\u201d but until then the Fourth Amendment tolerates reasonable mistakes with respect to an officer’s \u201cquick decision\u201d about the scope of the law. Id. at 66, 135 S.Ct. 530. In this setting, when an officer reasonably misinterprets the meaning of state law, there is \u201cno violation of the Fourth Amendment in the first place.\u201d Id. Favorable case law goes a long way to showing that an interpretation is reasonable. United States v. Diaz, 854 F.3d 197, 204\u201305 (2d Cir. 2017); cf. Heien, 574 U.S. at 70, 135 S.Ct. 530 (Kagan, J., concurring) (suggesting that an officer’s mistake of statutory interpretation is reasonable when a \u201creasonable judge could agree with the officer’s view\u201d).<\/p>

The other possibility is that the ambiguity in state law shows that the officers did not violate a clearly established right\u2014the second prong of the qualified immunity test. While this inquiry is similar to the reasonable mistake-of-law test, it is not the same. The reasonable mistake-of-law \u201cinquiry is not as forgiving as the one employed in the distinct context of deciding whether an officer is entitled to qualified immunity for a constitutional or statutory violation.\u201d Heien, 574 U.S. at 67, 135 S.Ct. 530. The more forgiving question asks only whether, at the time of the officer’s conduct, the law was \u201csufficiently clear that every reasonable official would [understand] that what he is doing\u201d violates the law\u2014so clear that the invalidity of the officer’s actions was \u201cbeyond debate.\u201d Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 741, 131 S.Ct. 2074, 179 L.Ed.2d 1149 (2011) (quotation omitted). This rigorous standard covers \u201call but the plainly incompetent\u201d officer. Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335, 341, 106 S.Ct. 1092, 89 L.Ed.2d 271 (1986).<\/p>

Wesby illustrates this point. \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The officers here had a reasonable basis for arresting plaintiff for obstruction of an officer, whether it was based on a reasonable mistake of fact or of law. And that plays into qualified immunity. Barrera v. City of Mount Pleasant, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49627"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49628,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49627\/revisions\/49628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}