{"id":7240,"date":"2012-06-05T09:24:43","date_gmt":"2012-06-04T14:30:22","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-06-04T14:53:35","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=7240","title":{"rendered":"SCOTUS: Arrest with PC qualified immunity on First Amendment claim because law not clearly established"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reichle v. Howards<\/a>, 11\u2013262 (June 4, 2012). SCOTUSBlog here<\/a>. From the Syllabus:<\/p>\n

Petitioners are entitled to qualified immunity because, at the time of Howards\u2019 arrest, it was not clearly established that an arrest supported by probable cause could give rise to a First Amendment violation. Pp. 5−12. <\/p>\n

(a) Courts may grant qualified immunity on the ground that a purported right was not clearly established\u201d by prior case law. Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U. S. 223, 236. To be clearly established, a right must be sufficiently clear \u201cthat every \u2018reasonable official would [have understood] that what he is doing violates that right.\u2019\u201d Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U. S. ___, ___. Pp. 5−6. <\/p>\n

(b) The \u201cclearly established\u201d standard is not satisfied here. This Court has never recognized a First Amendment right to be free from a retaliatory arrest that is supported by probable cause; nor was such a right otherwise clearly established at the time of Howards\u2019 arrest. P. 6. <\/p>\n

(c) At that time, Hartman\u2019s impact on the Tenth Circuit\u2019s precedent was far from clear. Although Hartman\u2019s facts involved only a retaliatory prosecution, reasonable law enforcement officers could have questioned whether its rule also applied to arrests. First, Hartman was decided against a legal backdrop that treated retaliatory arrest claims and retaliatory prosecution claims similarly. It resolved a Circuit split concerning the impact of probable cause on retaliatory prosecution claims, but some of the conflicting cases involved both retaliatory prosecution and retaliatory arrest claims and made no distinction between the two when considering the relevance of probable cause. Second, a reasonable official could have interpreted Hartman\u2019s rationale to apply to retaliatory arrests. Like in retaliatory prosecution cases, evidence of the presence or absence of probable cause for the arrest will be available in virtually all retaliatory arrest cases, and the causal link between the defendant\u2019s alleged retaliatory animus and the plaintiff\u2019s injury may be tenuous. Finally, decisions from other Circuits in the wake of Hartman support the conclusion that, for qualified immunity purposes, it was at least arguable at the time of Howards’ arrest that Hartman extended to retaliatory arrests. Pp. 7−12. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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