Opinion ID: 793775
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The defendants were protected by qualified immunity.

Text: 13 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, 121 S.Ct. 2151, 150 L.Ed.2d 272 (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. 14 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 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, 348 Ill.App.3d 109, 283 Ill.Dec. 763, 808 N.E.2d 1051, 1055 (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. 15 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 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. 16