Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/21-147_g31h.pdf
Page Number: 32.0

8 

EGBERT v. BOULE 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
Opinion of SOTOMAYOR, J. 

B 
Ziglar  and  Hernández  control  here.  Applying  the  two-
step  framework  set  forth  in  those  cases,  the  Court  of  Ap-
peals’ determination that Boule’s Fourth Amendment claim 
is cognizable under Bivens should be affirmed for two inde-
pendent  reasons.  First,  Boule’s  claim  does  not  present  a 
new context.  Second, even if it did, no special factors would 
counsel hesitation. 

1 

Boule’s Fourth Amendment claim does not arise in a new 
context.  Bivens  itself  involved  a  U. S.  citizen  bringing  a 
Fourth Amendment claim against individual, rank-and-file
federal law enforcement officers who allegedly violated his
constitutional rights within the United States by entering
his property without a warrant and using excessive force. 
Those are precisely the facts of Boule’s complaint. 

The only arguably salient difference in “context” between
this case and Bivens is that the defendants in Bivens were 
employed at the time by the (now-defunct) Federal Bureau 
of Narcotics, while Agent Egbert was employed by CBP.  As 
discussed,  however,  this  Court’s  precedent  instructs  that
some differences are too “trivial . . . to create a new Bivens 
context.”  Ziglar, 582 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 26).2  That it 
was a CBP agent rather than a Federal Bureau of Narcotics 
agent  who  unlawfully  entered  Boule’s  property  and  used
constitutionally  excessive  force  against  him  plainly  is  not 
the sort of “meaningful” distinction that our new-context in-
quiry is designed to weed out.  Ibid. 

—————— 

2 Egbert argues in passing that the fact that he was operating under a 
“ ‘statutory  . . .  mandate’  not  invoked  in  prior  cases,”  standing  alone, 
“dooms  [Boule’s]  no-new-context  argument.”    Reply  Brief  19  (quoting 
Ziglar, 582 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 16)).  Not so.  Egbert fails to show 
that any difference in statutory mandates as between CBP agents and 
other law enforcement officers is “meaningful,” which our precedents re-
quire him to do.  Id., at ___ (slip op., at 16).