Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/16pdf/15-1358_6khn.pdf
Page Number: 34

Cite as:  582 U. S. ____ (2017) 

29 

Opinion of the Court 

“must be apparent.”  Anderson, supra, at 640.  To subject 
officers  to  any  broader  liability  would  be  to  “disrupt  the 
balance  that  our  cases  strike  between  the  interests  in 
vindication  of  citizens’  constitutional  rights  and  in  public 
officials’  effective  performance  of  their  duties.”    Davis  v. 
Scherer,  468  U. S.  183,  195  (1984).    For  then,  both  as  a 
practical and legal matter, it would be difficult for officials
“reasonably  [to]  anticipate  when  their  conduct  may  give 
rise to liability for damages.”  Ibid. 

In light of these concerns, the Court has held that quali-
fied immunity protects “all but the plainly incompetent or 
those  who  knowingly  violate  the  law.”    Malley  v.  Briggs, 
475 U. S. 335, 341 (1986).  To determine whether a given 
officer  falls  into  either  of  those  two  categories,  a  court
must ask whether it would have been clear to a reasonable 
officer that the alleged conduct “was unlawful in the situa-
tion he confronted.”  Saucier, supra, at 202.  If so, then the 
defendant  officer  must  have  been  either  incompetent  or 
else a knowing violator of the law, and thus not entitled to 
qualified  immunity.  If  not,  however—i.e.,  if  a  reasonable 
officer might not have known for certain that the conduct 
was unlawful—then the officer is immune from liability. 

B 
Under  these  principles,  it  must  be  concluded  that  rea-
sonable  officials  in  petitioners’  positions  would  not  have
known,  and  could  not  have  predicted,  that  §1985(3)  pro-
hibited their joint consultations and the resulting policies
that caused the injuries alleged.

At least two aspects of the complaint indicate that peti-
tioners’  potential  liability  for  this  statutory  offense  would 
not have been known or anticipated by reasonable officials
in their position.  First, the conspiracy recited in the com-
plaint is alleged to have been between or among officers in
the  same  branch  of  the  Government  (the  Executive 
Branch) and in the same Department (the Department of