Supreme Court Asks for Briefs on Overruling Saucier Immunity Decision
In a case accepted for review today, the U.S. Supreme Court has asked lawyers to address whether the justices should overrule a 2001 decision involving government officials’ qualified immunity from lawsuits.
The appeal accepted for review, Pearson v. Callahan, asks whether police officers are immune from liability for entering a home without a warrant after an informant bought drugs inside, SCOTUSblog reports. Lower courts are divided on the issue of whether it is constitutionally permissible to conduct such searches, the blog says.
The informant wore a hidden microphone and gave authorities a signal when the drug buy was complete, the cert petition says (PDF posted by SCOTUSblog). The Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled the suit against the police officers could proceed, the Associated Press reports.
The Supreme Court agreed to review the immunity question in Pearson and asked the lawyers to brief a new question: whether the 2001 immunity decision, Saucier v. Katz, should be overturned, according to the SCOTUSblog post. Saucier established a two-step procedure to determine officials’ immunity from civil-rights lawsuits. It required courts to determine whether the officials sued had violated a constitutional right, and if so to determine whether the right had been clearly established at the time of the violation.
The court also granted cert in a separate case, U.S. v. Hayes, which asks the high court to clarify the meaning of a federal law barring those convicted of misdemeanor crimes of domestic violence from owning guns. The defendant was convicted of battery for harming his wife, but the crime did not require prosecutors to prove a domestic relationship for a conviction, says the cert petition (PDF posted by SCOTUSblog).
