Opinion ID: 4156909
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Recognizing Clearly Established Law

Text: The affirmative defense of qualified immunity is founded on the presumption government officials know and respect “basic, unquestioned constitutional rights,” measured by clearly established law. Harlow, 457 U.S. at 815, 102 S. Ct. at 2737 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). For a constitutional right to be clearly established, its contours must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right. This is not to say that an official action is protected by qualified immunity unless the very action in question has previously been held unlawful; but it is to say that in the light of pre-existing law the unlawfulness must be apparent. Hope, 536 U.S. at 739, 122 S. Ct. at 2515 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted) (emphasis added). The Hope Court cautioned courts determining clearly established law should not rely on prior cases merely because of “fundamentally similar” or “materially similar” facts. Id. at 741, 122 S. Ct. at 2516 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). “[O]fficials can still be on notice that their conduct violates established law even in novel factual circumstances.” Id. Instead, the focus should be on whether the law on the date of the excessive conduct in question gave the implicated officials “fair warning that their alleged treatment of 20 Case: 15-10206 Date Filed: 03/30/2017 Page: 21 of 46 [the plaintiff] was unconstitutional.” Id. The basic constitutional law governing excessive force in arrest situations was well established before Stephens’s arrest in February 2009.14 Qualified immunity is unavailable “if an official knew or reasonably should have known that the action he took within his sphere of official responsibility would violate the constitutional rights of the plaintiff.” Harlow, 457 U.S. at 815, 102 S. Ct. at 2737 (citation, internal quotation marks, and alteration omitted); see Sheth v. Webster, 145 F.3d 1231, 1235-36 (11th Cir. 1998) (affirming denial of qualified immunity, “because of the absence of any justification for [the officer’s] use of force, application of the Fourth Amendment reasonableness standard would inevitably lead every reasonable officer . . . to conclude that the force was unlawful” (citation and internal quotation marks omitted) (ellipsis in original)).