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Supreme Court rules Saucier qualified immunity test not mandatory in every case

By Bernard Hibbitts (editor) and University of Pittsburgh School of Law students.

[JURIST] The US Supreme Court issued decisions in five cases Wednesday. The Court ruled unanimously in Pearson v. Callahan that the test for whether a government official is entitled to qualified immunity, established by the Court in 2001 in Saucier v. Katz, is no longer mandatory in every case. Under Saucier, a judge first had to decide whether a government official's action violated the Constitution and only if there was a violation, then whether the constitutional right was "clearly established" at the time of the violation. In this case, police officers entered respondents' home without a warrant and conducted a search that respondents allege was in violation of the Fourth Amendment. In his opinion for the Court, Justice Samuel Alito wrote:We now hold that the Saucier procedure should not be regarded as an inflexible requirement and that petitioners are entitled to qualified immunity on the ground that it was not clearly established at the time of the search that their conduct was unconstitutional.The ruling overturns the decision of the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, which held that petitioners were not entitled to qualified immunity. The court ruled unanimously in Fitzgerald v. Barnstable School Committee that Title IX does not preclude Section 1983 constitutional claims to remedy sex discrimination in educational settings. Alito wrote:Congress modeled Title IX after Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and passed Title IX with the explicit understanding that it would be interpreted as Title VI was. At the time of Title IX's enactment in 1972, Title VI was routinely interpreted to allow for parallel and concurrent § 1983 claims, and we presume Congress was aware of this when it passed Title IX. In the absence of any contrary evidence, it follows that Congress intended Title IX to be interpreted similarly to allow for parallel and concurrent § 1983 claims. At the least, this indicates that Congress did not affirmatively intend Title IX to preclude such claims.This reverses the decision by US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, which found that parents could not sue for discrimination against their daughter by another student under Section 1983 and that Title IX provided the only remedy. The Court ruled unanimously in Locke v. Karass that a state may constitutionally require non-union public employees to pay agency fees to a union acting as an exclusive bargaining unit when part of that money pays for litigation conducted by the union's national affiliate. Delivering the opinion of the Court, Justice Stephen Breyer wrote:under our precedent the Constitution permits including this element in the local's charge to nonmembers as long as (1) the subject matter of the (extra-local) litigation is of a kind that would be chargeable if the litigation were local, e.g., litigation appropriately related to collective bargaining rather than political activities, and (2) the litigation charge is reciprocal in nature, i.e., the contributing local reasonably expects other locals to contribute similarly to the national's resources used for costs of similar litigation on behalf of the contributing local if and when it takes place.Alito issued a concurring opinion, in which Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia joined. Alito wrote, "that our decision, as I understand it, does not reach the question of what 'reciprocity' means." The ruling upholds the decision of the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.The Court ruled 6-3 in Waddington v. Sarausad that the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit erred in overturning the murder conviction of a driver in a 1994 Seattle drive-by shooting on the grounds of incorrect jury instructions on accomplice liability. In his majority opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote:Even if we agreed that the instruction was ambiguous, the Court of Appeals still erred in finding that the instruction was so ambiguous as to cause a federal constitutional violation, as required for us to reverse the state court's determination under. The Washington courts reasonably applied this Court's precedent when they determined that there was no "reasonable likelihood" that the prosecutor's closing argument caused Sarausad's jury to apply the instruction in a way that relieved the State of its burden to prove every element of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt.Justice David Souter issued a dissenting opinion, in which Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader-Ginsburg joined. Souter wrote that, "The District Court and the Ninth Circuit drew the only conclusion reasonably possible on this record."Finally, the Court ruled 5-4 in Spears v. United States that that federal judges may impose lesser sentences for crack cocaine offenses than provided for by federal Sentencing Guidelines. In a per curium opinion, the Court granted certiorari and reversed the decision of the lower court, holding "that district courts are entitled to reject and vary categorically from the crack-cocaine Guidelines based on a policy disagreement with those Guidelines." Thomas dissented without issuing an opinion. Roberts issued a dissenting opinion, in which Alito joined. Justice Anthony Kennedy would have granted the petition for certiorari and set the case for oral argument.

Full post as published by JURIST - The Paper Chase on January 21, 2009 (boomark / email).