Opinion ID: 3026437
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Saucier Test for Qualified Immunity

Text: As we noted in Curley I, the claim here arises under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, which “provides a cause of action for any person who has been deprived of rights secured by the Constitution or laws of the United States by a person acting under color of law.” 298 F.3d at 277. Police officers, embodying the authority of the state, are liable under § 1983 when they violate someone’s constitutional rights, unless they are protected by qualified immunity. Qualified immunity is “the best attainable accommodation of competing values ... .” Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 814 (1982). Since public officials exercising discretionary powers may sometimes abuse their discretion, the immunity is qualified, rather than absolute, so that civil damages can serve as a restraint. At the same time, the immunity incorporates a recognition that “claims frequently run against the innocent as well as the guilty – at a cost not only to the defendant officials, but to society as a whole.” Id. While unproductive societal costs may be unavoidable in a system that relies on private litigation as one means to enforce our constitutional norms, the aim of qualified immunity is to limit those costs to the greatest practical degree. We do not want to let the threat of litigation and personal liability “deter[] ... able citizens from acceptance of public office[,]” nor do we want to “dampen the ardor of all but the most resolute, or the most irresponsible public officials, in the unflinching discharge of their duties.” Id. (internal quotation marks, brackets, and citation omitted). Hence, “[t]his immunity is broad in scope and protects ‘all but 14 the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law.’” Couden v. Duffy, 446 F.3d 483, 501 (3d Cir. 2006) (Weis, J., dissenting) (quoting Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335, 341 (1986)). In Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194 (2001), the Supreme Court articulated a two step test for determining whether a government official, such as a police officer, is entitled to qualified immunity.6 In the first step, a court must address whether “the officer’s conduct violated a constitutional right[.]” Id. at 201. In an excessive force case, whether there is a constitutional violation is “properly analyzed under the Fourth Amendment’s ‘objective reasonableness’ standard[.]” Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 388 (1989). The relevant inquiry is “the reasonableness of the officer’s belief as to the appropriate level of force[,]” which “should be judged from [the officer’s] on-scene perspective,” and not in the “20/20 vision of hindsight.” Saucier, 533 U.S. at 205 (internal citations and quotation marks removed). 6 Saucier was not the first time the Court had framed the analysis in two parts, see Siegert v. Gilley, 500 U.S. 226, 232 (1991) (“A necessary concomitant to the determination of whether the constitutional right asserted by a plaintiff is ‘clearly established’ at the time the defendant acted is the determination of whether the plaintiff has asserted a violation of a constitutional right at all.”), but it is the decision that has become synonymous with the current approach to qualified immunity analysis. 15 That reasonableness inquiry requires “careful attention to the facts and circumstances of each particular case, including the severity of the crime at issue, whether the suspect poses an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others, and whether he is actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight.” Graham, 490 U.S. at 396. The analysis “requires a careful balancing of the nature and quality of the intrusion on the individual’s Fourth Amendment interests against the countervailing governmental interests at stake.” Id. (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). The balancing must be conducted in light of the facts that were available to the officer. See Maryland v. Garrison, 480 U.S. 79, 85 (1987) (“[W]e must judge the constitutionality of [the officers’] conduct in light of the information available to them at the time they acted.”). It is, in other words, a “totality of the circumstances” analysis. See Curley I, 298 F.3d at 279 (assessing objective reasonableness of defendant’s actions on basis of totality of the circumstances); cf. Graham, 490 U.S. at 396 (proper application of reasonableness test used to analyze a claimed violation of Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable seizure “requires careful attention to the facts and circumstances of each particular case”); Abraham, 183 F.3d at 289 (“How much force is permissible to effectuate an arrest ... is determined based on the ‘totality of the circumstances.’”). “If, and only if, the court finds a violation of a constitutional right,” Scott v. Harris, 127 S. Ct. 1769, 1774 (2007), the court moves to the second step of the analysis and asks whether immunity should nevertheless shield the officer 16 from liability.7 The question at this second step is whether the right that was violated was clearly established, or, in other words, “whether it would be clear to a reasonable officer that his conduct was unlawful in the situation he confronted.” Saucier, 533 U.S. at 202. The Court explained that, again, “this inquiry ... must be undertaken in light of the specific context of the case, not as a broad general proposition.” Id. at 201. The Court went on to emphasize that even where reasonableness is a part of the inquiry for both the constitutional question and for qualified immunity, as it is in an excessive force case, the inquiries remain distinct. Id. at 204-05. “The concern of the immunity inquiry is to acknowledge that reasonable mistakes can be made as to the legal constraints on particular police conduct.” Id. at 205. Thus, the first step of the analysis addresses whether the force used by the officer was excessive, and therefore violative of the plaintiff’s constitutional rights, or whether it was reasonable in light of the facts and circumstances available to the officer at the time. This is not a question of immunity at all, but is instead the underlying question of whether there is even a wrong to be addressed in an analysis of immunity. The second step is the immunity analysis and addresses whether, if there was a wrong, such as the use of excessive force, the officer made a reasonable mistake about the legal constraints on his actions and should therefore be protected against suit 7 As further explained herein, infra at sections IV.B and IV.C, we do not have occasion to reach that second step here, because no constitutional violation occurred in this case. 17 While the Saucier analytical approach has been criticized for being unduly rigid and demanding resolution of constitutional issues when cases could be more simply disposed of on other grounds, see, e.g., Los Angeles County, California v. Rettele, 127 S. Ct. 1989, 1994 (2007) (Stevens, J., dissenting) (discussing the “unwise practice of deciding constitutional questions in advance of the necessity for doing so.”); Scott, 127 S. Ct. at 1774 n.4 (recounting criticisms of Saucier); P. Leval, Judging Under the Constitution, 81 NYU L. Rev. 1249, 1275-81 (2006) (describing Saucier as requiring courts to engage in “a puzzling misadventure in constitutional dictum”), its order of inquiry nevertheless remains mandatory. Scott, 127 S. Ct. at 1774 n.4 (declining to “address the wisdom of Saucier”).