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Civil Rights — retaliatory arrest — qualified immunity

By: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF//June 4, 2012//

Civil Rights — retaliatory arrest — qualified immunity

By: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF//June 4, 2012//

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U.S. Supreme Court

Civil

Civil Rights — retaliatory arrest — qualified immunity

Secret service agents are entitled to qualified immunity on a claim of retaliatory arrest.

At that time, Hartman’s impact on the Tenth Circuit’s precedent was far from clear. Although Hartman’s facts involved only a retaliatory prosecution, reasonable law enforcement officers could have questioned whether its rule also applied to arrests. First, Hartman was decided against a legal backdrop that treated retaliatory arrest claims and retaliatory prosecution claims similarly. It resolved a Circuit split concerning the impact of probable cause on retaliatory prosecution claims, but some of the conflicting cases involved both retaliatory prosecution and retaliatory arrest claims and made no distinction between the two when considering the relevance of probable cause. Second, a reasonable official could have interpreted Hartman’s rationale to apply to retaliatory arrests. Like in retaliatory prosecution cases, evidence of the presence or absence of probable cause for the arrest will be available in virtually all retaliatory arrest cases, and the causal link between the defendant’s alleged retaliatory animus and the plaintiff’s injury may be tenuous. Finally, decisions from other Circuits in the wake of Hartman support the conclusion that, for qualified immunity purposes, it was at least arguable at the time of Howards’ arrest that Hartman extended to retaliatory arrests.

634 F. 3d 1131, reversed and remanded.

11-262 Reichle v. Howards

Thomas, J.; Ginsburg, J., concurring.

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