SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
CITY OF ESCONDIDO, CALIFORNIA, et al.
v. MARTY EMMONS
on petition for writ of certiorari to the
united states court of appeals for the ninth circuit
No. 17–1660. Decided January 7, 2019
Per Curiam.
The question in this qualified immunity case is
whether two police officers violated clearly established law when
they forcibly apprehended a man at the scene of a reported domestic
violence incident.
The record, viewed in the light most favorable
to the plaintiff, shows the following. In April 2013, Escondido
police received a 911 call from Maggie Emmons about a domestic
violence incident at her apartment. Emmons lived at the apartment
with her husband, her two children, and a roommate, Ametria
Douglas. Officer Jake Houchin responded to the scene and eventually
helped take a domestic violence report from Emmons about injuries
caused by her husband. The officers arrested her husband. He was
later released.
A few weeks later, on May 27, 2013, at about
2:30 p.m., Escondido police received a 911 call about another
possible domestic disturbance at Emmons’ apartment. That 911 call
came from Ametria Douglas’ mother, Trina Douglas. Trina Douglas was
not at the apartment, but she was on the phone with her daughter
Ametria, who was at the apartment. Trina heard her daughter Ametria
and Maggie Emmons yelling at each other and heard her daughter
screaming for help. The call then disconnected, and Trina Douglas
called 911.
Officer Houchin again responded, along with
Officer Robert Craig. The dispatcher informed the officers that two
children could be in the residence and that calls to the apartment
had gone unanswered.
Police body-camera video of the officers’
actions at the apartment is in the record.
The officers knocked on the door of the
apartment. No one answered. But a side window was open, and the
officers spoke with Emmons through that window, attempting to
convince her to open the door to the apartment so that they could
conduct a welfare check. A man in the apartment also told Emmons to
back away from the window, but the officers said they could not
identify the man. At some point during this exchange, Sergeant
Kevin Toth, Officer Joseph Leffingwell, and Officer Huy Quach
arrived as backup.
A few minutes later, a man opened the apartment
door and came outside. At that point, Officer Craig was standing
alone just outside the door. Officer Craig told the man not to
close the door, but the man closed the door and tried to brush past
Officer Craig. Officer Craig stopped the man, took him quickly to
the ground, and handcuffed him. Officer Craig did not hit the man
or display any weapon. The video shows that the man was not in any
visible or audible pain as a result of the takedown or while on the
ground. Within a few minutes, officers helped the man up and
arrested him for a misdemeanor offense of resisting and delaying a
police officer.
The man turned out to be Maggie Emmons’ father,
Marty Emmons. Marty Emmons later sued Officer Craig and Sergeant
Toth, among others, under Rev. Stat. §1979, 42 U. S. C.
§1983. He raised several claims, including, as relevant here, a
claim of excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The
suit sought money damages for which Officer Craig and Sergeant Toth
would be personally liable. The District Court held that the
officers had probable cause to arrest Marty Emmons for the
misdemeanor offense. The Ninth Circuit did not disturb that
finding, and there is no claim presently before us that the
officers lacked probable cause to arrest Marty Emmons. The only
claim before us is that the officers used excessive force in
effectuating the arrest.
The District Court rejected the claim of
excessive force. 168 F. Supp. 3d 1265, 1274 (SD Cal. 2016).
The District Court stated that the “video shows that the officers
acted professionally and respectfully in their encounter” at the
apartment. Id., at 1275. Because only Officer Craig used any
force at all, the District Court granted summary judgment to
Sergeant Toth on the excessive force claim.
Applying this Court’s precedents on qualified
immunity, the District Court also granted summary judgment to
Officer Craig. According to the District Court, the law did not
clearly establish that Officer Craig could not take down an
arrestee in these circumstances. The court explained that the
officers were responding to a domestic dispute, and that the
encounter had escalated when the officers could not enter the
apartment to conduct a welfare check. The District Court also noted
that when Marty Emmons exited the apartment, none of the officers
knew whether he was armed or dangerous, or whether he had injured
any individuals inside the apartment.
The Court of Appeals reversed and remanded for
trial on the excessive force claims against both Officer Craig and
Sergeant Toth. 716 Fed. Appx. 724 (CA9 2018). The Ninth Circuit’s
entire relevant analysis of the qual- ified immunity question
consisted of the following: “The right to be free of excessive
force was clearly established at the time of the events in
question. Gravelet-Blondin v. Shelton, 728 F. 3d
1086, 1093 (9th Cir. 2013).” Id., at 726.
We reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals
as to Sergeant Toth, and vacate and remand as to Officer Craig.
With respect to Sergeant Toth, the Ninth Circuit
offered no explanation for its decision. The court’s unexplained
reinstatement of the excessive force claim against Sergeant Toth
was erroneous—and quite puzzling in light of the District Court’s
conclusion that “only Defendant Craig was involved in the excessive
force claim” and that Emmons “fail[ed] to identify contrary
evidence.” 168 F. Supp. 3d, at 1274, n. 4.
As to Officer Craig, the Ninth Circuit also
erred. As we have explained many times: “Qualified immunity
attaches when an official’s conduct does not violate clearly
established statutory or constitutional rights of which a
reasonable person would have known.” Kisela v.
Hughes, 584 U. S. ___, ___ (2018) (per curiam)
(slip op., at 4) (internal quotation marks omitted); see
District of Columbia v. Wesby, 583 U. S. ___,
___–___ (2018); White v. Pauly, 580 U. S. ___,
___–___ (2017) (per curiam); Mullenix v. Luna,
577 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2015) (per curiam).
Under our cases, the clearly established right
must be defined with specificity. “This Court has repeatedly told
courts . . . not to define clearly established law at a
high level of generality.” Kisela, 584 U. S., at ___
(slip op., at 4) (internal quotation marks omitted). That is
particularly important in excessive force cases, as we have
explained:
“Specificity is especially important in the
Fourth Amendment context, where the Court has recognized that it is
sometimes difficult for an officer to determine how the relevant
legal doctrine, here excessive force, will apply to the factual
situation the officer confronts. Use of excessive force is an area
of the law in which the result depends very much on the facts of
each case, and thus police officers are entitled to qualified
immunity unless existing precedent squarely governs the specific
facts at issue. . . .
“[I]t does not suffice for a court simply to
state that an officer may not use unreasonable and excessive force,
deny qualified immunity, and then remit the case for a trial on the
question of reasonableness. An officer cannot be said to have
violated a clearly established right unless the right’s contours
were sufficiently definite that any reasonable official in the
defendant’s shoes would have understood that he was violating it.”
Id., at ___ (slip op., at 5) (quotation altered).
In this case, the Court of Appeals contravened
those settled principles. The Court of Appeals should have asked
whether clearly established law prohibited the officers from
stopping and taking down a man in these circumstances. Instead, the
Court of Appeals defined the clearly established right at a high
level of generality by saying only that the “right to be free of
excessive force” was clearly established. With the right defined at
that high level of generality, the Court of Appeals then denied
qualified immunity to the officers and remanded the case for trial.
716 Fed. Appx., at 726.
Under our precedents, the Court of Appeals’
formulation of the clearly established right was far too general.
To be sure, the Court of Appeals cited the Gravelet-Blondin
case from that Circuit, which described a right to be “free from
the application of non-trivial force for engaging in mere passive
resistance. . . .” 728 F. 3d, at 1093. Assuming
without deciding that a court of appeals decision may constitute
clearly established law for purposes of qualified immunity, see
City and County of San Francisco v. Sheehan, 575
U. S. ___, ___ (2015), the Ninth Circuit’s
Gravelet-Blondin case law involved police force against
individuals engaged in passive resistance. The Court of
Appeals made no effort to explain how that case law prohibited
Officer Craig’s actions in this case. That is a problem under our
precedents:
“[W]e have stressed the need to identify a
case where an officer acting under similar circumstances was held
to have violated the Fourth Amendment. . . . While
there does not have to be a case directly on point, existing
precedent must place the lawfulness of the particular [action]
beyond debate. . . . Of course, there can be the
rare obvious case, where the unlawfulness of the officer’s conduct
is sufficiently clear even though existing precedent does not
address similar circumstances. . . . But a body of
relevant case law is usually necessary to clearly establish the
answer . . . .” Wesby, 583 U. S.,
at ___ (slip op., at 15) (internal quotation marks omitted).
The Court of Appeals failed to properly analyze
whether clearly established law barred Officer Craig from stopping
and taking down Marty Emmons in this manner as Emmons exited the
apartment. Therefore, we remand the case for the Court of Appeals
to conduct the analysis required by our precedents with respect to
whether Officer Craig is entitled to qualified immunity.
The petition for certiorari is granted, the
judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed in part and vacated in
part, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent
with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
