Opinion ID: 2998857
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The defendants were protected by qualified

Text: immunity. Even if we were to find that there was insufficient probable cause to justify Mustafa’s arrest, the doctrine of qualified immunity would nonetheless ensure a ruling in favor of the defendants. Qualified immunity protects officers performing discretionary functions from civil liability so long as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights that a reasonable person would know about. See Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 201 (2001). A plaintiff seeking to defeat this defense in a Section 1983 action must show, first, that the plaintiff’s rights were violated. Id. Second, the plaintiff must show that the law concerning the plaintiff’s asserted right was clearly established at the time the challenged conduct occurred. Id. Finally, the court must determine whether a reasonably competent official would know that the conduct was unlawful in the situation he confronted. Id. Here, Mustafa certainly had a right to be free from an arrest that lacked probable cause, and that right is clearly established, so the only remaining question is whether a reasonable officer could believe that it was lawful to arrest Mustafa. As discussed above, Mustafa argues that it was unreasonable to believe she had committed a crime because her statement about a bomb was phrased as a possibility No. 05-2101 7 rather than a fact (“maybe I have a bomb in my purse”), because any reasonable person would have realized that she was not serious, and because she did not actually frighten or convince anyone that she had a real bomb. However, even if we accepted this argument, this would not disturb the defendants’ qualified immunity defense. As discussed above, the Illinois statute at issue applies to implausible and unconvincing bomb threats. See People v. Barron, 808 N.E.2d 1051, 1055 (Ill. App. Ct. 2004) (upholding the felony disorderly conduct conviction of an individual who joked about having a bomb in his shoe at Midway Airport, because the statute applies to false threats “regardless of the intention of the speaker or the effect the words have upon the person receiving them”). At the time of the arrest, prior to Barron, the application of the bomb threat statute to circumstances involving jokes, sarcasm, etc., was, perhaps, arguable; a court might theoretically read a limitation into the statute and apply it only to credible or convincing bomb threats. But where the law is open to interpretation, qualified immunity protects police officers who reasonably interpret an unclear statute. Reviewing courts must ask “whether X is a crime under the statute that the police arrested the plaintiff for violating. If the answer to that question was unclear when the arrest was made, the police are entitled to their immunity.” Northen v. City of Chicago, 126 F.3d 1024, 1027-28 (7th Cir. 1997). Here, the most Mustafa can plausibly claim is that the criminality of her conditional statement was unclear; no case clearly established that implausible threats fall outside of its reach. Furthermore, even if no reasonable person could have believed that Mustafa had made a genuine bomb threat, the officers might reasonably have believed that Mustafa had committed the closely related offense of nonspecific disorderly conduct under 720 ILL. COMP. STAT. 5/26-1(a)(1), which covers any unreasonable activity which alarms 8 No. 05-2101 or disturbs another and provokes a breach of the peace. It is undisputed that Mustafa disturbed employees at the airport and that a noisy confrontation ensued. Officers may arrest individuals suspected of any crime; the fact that Mustafa was prosecuted under only the bomb threat section of the disorderly conduct statute does not mean that she could only properly be arrested under that section. Thus, the officers are protected by qualified immunity, and the district court’s ruling in their favor is affirmed. C. The defendant-appellees are not entitled to attorneys’ fees. The defendants have moved for attorneys’ fees pursuant to Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 38, 42 U.S.C. § 1988(b), and 28 U.S.C. § 1927. Those provisions permit the discretionary award of attorneys’ fees to the victorious party where a losing party has engaged in frivolous appeals or vexatiously and unreasonably prolonged litigation. See, e.g., Meredith v. Navistar Int’l Transp. Corp., 935 F.2d 124, 129 (7th Cir. 1991) (award of attorneys’ fees under Fed. R. App. P. 38 unjustified where brief is not “entirely groundless” and does not contain “blatant misrepresentations”); Badillo v. Cent. Steel & Wire Co., 717 F.2d 1160 (7th Cir. 1983) (prevailing defendants in civil rights cases only entitled to attorneys’ fees under § 1988 where plaintiff’s goal was to harass or embarrass defendant); Riddle & Assocs. v. Kelly, 414 F.3d 832, 835-36 (7th Cir. 2005) (attorneys’ fees sanction under § 1927 appropriate where attorney conduct is “objectively unreasonable”). While we agree with the defendants that Mustafa should not prevail, we do not agree that her appeal was objectively frivolous or vexatious in the sense contemplated by these rules and statutes. Mustafa unintentionally provoked a security alarm, and as a result, she suffered a very unpleasant interaction with the defendants that she believed was No. 05-2101 9 unjustified and based on prejudice. In support of that position, she put forth a reasonable legal theory that failed; we see no abuse of the courts or the defendants in that. Nor is there evidence that Mustafa or her attorney is the kind of serial filer who must be deterred from clogging the courts with junk lawsuits in the future (a policy goal of Section 1927). The motion for attorneys’ fees is denied.