In ‘Significant Shift,’ Supreme Court Abandons Saucier’s Two-Step Immunity Test
Acknowledging some pointed criticism of its 2001 immunity decision Saucier v. Katz, the U.S. Supreme Court has nixed the ruling’s rigid two-step test for determining immunity.
Today’s unanimous opinion by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said judges shouldn’t be forced to engage in “an essentially academic exercise” by having to decide constitutional issues under Saucier’s first step that could be avoided by jumping to the second step.
The ruling, Pearson v. Callahan, represents a “significant shift in constitutional doctrine,” SCOTUSblog reports.
Under Saucier, courts evaluating government officials’ immunity claims were required to determine whether the officials had violated a constitutional right, and if so, to then determine whether the right had been clearly established at the time of the violation.
“We now hold that the Saucier procedure should not be regarded as an inflexible requirement,” Alito wrote in the opinion (PDF posted by SCOTUSblog).
“The judges of the district courts and the courts of appeals should be permitted to exercise their sound discretion in deciding which of the two prongs of the qualified immunity analysis should be addressed first in light of the circumstances in the particular case at hand.”
The opinion notes criticism of Saucier by lower courts, legal commentators and some Supreme Court justices. Saucier has been called “a puzzling misadventure in constitutional dictum” and an “unwise judge-made rule.”
The problem, critics say, is that Saucier required judges to decide constitutional issues that they could have avoided if a lawsuit ends up being tossed because a constitutional right was not clearly established under the 2001 decision’s second prong.
Alito acknowledged the problem. “There are cases in which it is plain that a constitutional right is not clearly established but far from obvious whether in fact there is such a right,” he wrote.
“District courts and courts of appeals with heavy caseloads are often understandably unenthusiastic about what may seem to be an essentially academic exercise.”
Today’s ruling came in a suit brought against five Utah police officers who searched a drug suspect’s home without a warrant, the Associated Press reports. The decision held the police officers were entitled to immunity.
