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EGBERT v. BOULE 

Syllabus 

Amendment violation for unlawful retaliation.  Invoking Bivens v. Six 
Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents, 403 U. S. 388, Boule asked the Dis-
trict  Court  to  recognize  a  damages  action  for  each  alleged  constitu-
tional violation.  The District Court declined to extend Bivens as re-
quested, but the Court of Appeals reversed. 

Held: Bivens does not extend to create causes of action for Boule’s Fourth 
Amendment  excessive-force  claim  and  First  Amendment  retaliation 
claim.  Pp. 5–17. 

(a) In Bivens, the Court held that it had authority to create a dam-
ages action against federal agents for violating the plaintiff’s Fourth 
Amendment  rights.  Over  the  next  decade,  the  Court  also  fashioned 
new causes of action under the Fifth Amendment, see Davis v. Pass-
man, 442 U. S. 228, and the Eighth Amendment, see Carlson v. Green, 
446 U. S. 14.  Since then, however, the Court has come “to appreciate
more fully the tension between” judicially created causes of action and
“the Constitution’s separation of legislative and judicial power,” Her-
nández v. Mesa, 589 U. S. ___, ___, and has declined 11 times to imply
a similar cause of action for other alleged constitutional violations, see, 
e.g., Chappell v. Wallace, 462 U. S. 296; Bush v. Lucas, 462 U. S. 367. 
Rather than dispense with Bivens, the Court now emphasizes that rec-
ognizing  a  Bivens  cause  of  action  is  “a  disfavored  judicial  activity.” 
Ziglar v. Abbasi, 582 U. S. ___, ___. 

The  analysis  of  a  proposed  Bivens  claim  proceeds  in  two  steps:  A 
court asks first whether the case presents “a new Bivens context”—i.e., 
is it “meaningfully different from the three cases in which the Court
has implied a damages action,” Ziglar, 582 U. S., at ___, and, second, 
even  if  so,  do  “special  factors”  indicate  that  the  Judiciary  is  at  least 
arguably less equipped than Congress to “weigh the costs and benefits
of allowing a damages action to proceed.”  Id., at ___.  This two-step
inquiry often resolves to a single question: whether there is any reason 
to think that Congress might be better equipped to create a damages 
remedy.  Further, under the Court’s precedents, a court may not fash-
ion a Bivens remedy if Congress already has provided, or has author-
ized  the  Executive  to  provide,  “an  alternative  remedial  structure.” 
Ziglar, 582 U. S., at ___.  Pp. 5–8.

(b) The Court of Appeals conceded that Boule’s Fourth Amendment 
claim  presented  a  new  Bivens  context,  but  its  conclusion  that  there 
was no reason to hesitate before recognizing a cause of action against
Agent Egbert was incorrect for two independent reasons.  Pp. 9–13.

(1) First, the “risk of undermining border security provides reason 
to  hesitate  before  extending  Bivens  into  this  field.”  Hernández,  589 
U. S., at ___.  In Hernández, the Court declined to create a damages
remedy for an excessive-force claim against a Border Patrol agent be-
cause “regulating the conduct of agents at the border unquestionably