A 'bait and switch' cert petition? SCOTUS sidesteps question on ADA rights of mentally ill arrestees
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The U.S. Supreme Court knocked lawyers for the city of San Francisco when it ruled Monday on only one question in a case involving a mentally ill woman shot and wounded by police officers after they entered her room and she charged them with a kitchen knife.
The majority opinion (PDF) by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. found that San Francisco police did not violate any of the woman’s clearly established Fourth Amendment rights and they were entitled to qualified immunity.
But the court did not rule on a second question—whether the Americans with Disability Act requires officers to provide accommodations when arresting an armed, violent and mentally ill suspect. The city of San Francisco had conceded that the act may apply to arrests, and “no one argues the contrary view,” Alito said. “As a result, we do not think that it would be prudent to decide the question in this case.”
A partial concurrence by Justice Antonin Scalia, joined by Justice Elena Kagan, went further. The ADA question had created a circuit split, a fact highlighted in the cert petition arguing that the law did not apply.
“Imagine our surprise, then,” Scalia wrote, “when the petitioners’ principal brief, reply brief, and oral argument had nary a word to say about that subject.” Instead, Scalia said, lawyers for San Francisco argued, in effect, that the issue was not whether the ADA applies, but how it applies to the circumstances of the case.
“Why, one might ask, would a petitioner take a position on a circuit split that it had no intention of arguing, or at least was so little keen to argue that it cast the argument aside uninvited?” Scalia wrote. “The answer is simple. Petitioners included that issue to induce us to grant certiorari. …
“I would not reward such bait-and-switch tactics by proceeding to decide the independently ‘uncertworthy’ second question.”
The woman who sued for the alleged ADA violation, Teresa Sheehan, had a private room in a group home for people with mental illness. In August 2008, she threatened a social worker who opened the door to check on her. The social worker called police to help take Sheehan to a secure facility. Before the police officers acted, they reviewed a temporary detention application filled out by the social worker that indicated Sheehan was a danger to herself or others.
When officers first opened the door, Sheehan grabbed a knife with about a five-inch blade, threatened to kill the officers, and told them to leave. The officers retreated and called for backup, but they feared Sheehan could escape through a back window and they decided to re-enter the room. The officers’ pepper spray did not deter Sheehan, who did not drop the knife. The officers fired multiple shots and Sheehan collapsed, but survived.
Addressing the first issue, Alito said there was “no doubt” that the officers did not violate Sheehan’s constitutional rights when they first opened the door. “The real question, then, is whether, despite these dangerous circumstances, the officers violated the Fourth Amendment when they decided to reopen Sheehan’s door rather than attempting to accommodate her disability,” Alito said. Because the city of San Francisco “devotes scant briefing to this question,” Alito said, the court would not resolve the Fourth Amendment question.
“Rather, we simply decide whether the officers’ failure to accommodate Sheehan’s illness violated clearly established law. It did not,” Alito concluded.
Justice Stephen G. Breyer did not participate in the case.
Related article:
ABAJournal.com: “SCOTUS will consider cops’ ADA obligations when arresting mentally ill suspects”
