Opinion ID: 3066706
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Initial Terry-like Stop

Text: Moore does not point to a particular Supreme Court, valid Eleventh Circuit, or Florida Supreme Court case that he contends clearly established that Terry-like stops may not be conducted in the home. Instead, he asserts that it was clearly established that a Terry stop could not occur inside the home because all cases approving of Terry stops involve temporary detentions in public places, not in - 20 - Case: 14-14201 Date Filed: 10/15/2015 Page: 21 of 53 homes. In further support of his argument, Moore points to a vacated Eleventh Circuit case and cases outside this Circuit where courts have opined that a Terry stop cannot occur in the home. We disagree that Moore has demonstrated that the law was clearly established in this case as of November 15, 2008, that an officer may not conduct a Terry-like stop in the home in the absence of exigent circumstances. First, the mere dearth of binding caselaw holding that a particular activity is constitutional cannot, in and of itself, clearly establish that that activity is unconstitutional or otherwise impermissible. Indeed, that Moore discovered no valid, binding caselaw that holds that a Terry-like stop can be conducted in a home does not somehow clearly establish the principle that a Terry-like stop cannot be executed in a home. Nor does Moore find the necessary support in the cases he cites. Moore relies on a vacated Eleventh Circuit case, two Ninth Circuit cases that were issued after November 15, 2008, and a Tenth Circuit case that was issued in May 2008. To state the obvious, United States v. Tobin, 890 F.2d 319, 327 (11th Cir. 1989), vacated, 902 F.2d 821 (11th Cir. 1990), the Eleventh Circuit case on which Moore relies, was vacated. That means it has no legal force, so it could not have clearly established the law. - 21 - Case: 14-14201 Date Filed: 10/15/2015 Page: 22 of 53 While Moore acknowledges as much, he suggests that the Eleventh Circuit’s subsequent en banc opinion in Tobin, 923 F.2d 1506, 1511 (11th Cir. 1991) (en banc) (“Tobin II”), clearly established that an in-home Terry-like stop violates the Fourth Amendment when it stated that “reasonable suspicion cannot justify the warrantless search of a house.” Not only does the quotation that Moore cites address warrantless searches, not Terry-like stops, but review of the entire quotation—“Reasonable suspicion cannot justify the warrantless search of a house, but it can justify the agents’ approaching the house to question the occupants,” 923 F.3d at 1511 (emphasis added) (citation omitted)—does not “dictate[], that is, truly compel[], the conclusion for all reasonable, similarly situated public officials that what Defendant was doing violated Plaintiff[’s] federal rights in the circumstances.” Evans v. Stephens, 407 F.3d 1272, 1282 (11th Cir. 2005) (en banc) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). In fact, a panel of this Court, relying on the same quotation about “warrantless search[es]” in Tobin II on which Moore hangs his hat, said only that “[w]e are skeptical that ‘reasonable suspicion’ is the correct standard for justifying the officers’ entry” into the home. Morris, 748 F.3d at 1323 n.17. If, as recently as last year, a panel of this Court was, at worst, “skeptical” that Terry-like stops could occur in the home, we cannot say that the law on that point was “clearly established” for officers six-and-one-half years ago. For this reason, Moore’s - 22 - Case: 14-14201 Date Filed: 10/15/2015 Page: 23 of 53 argument must fail, regardless of the caselaw from other jurisdictions. 12 And we cannot conclude that in November 2008 the law was clearly established in this Circuit that a Terry-like stop cannot be conducted in the home, in the absence of exigent circumstances. As a result, the district court correctly found that Pederson was protected by qualified immunity with respect to the initial Terry-like stop.