Matthew Wayne Minard, Individually and in His Official Capacity as a Taylor Police Officer v. Debra Lee Cruise-Gulyas

I. Did the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals define the “clearly established” constitutional rights at issue in this qualified immunity case at too high a level of generality? II. A Michigan police officer initiated a traffic stop of a vehicle for speeding. Exercising his discretion, the police officer issued a ticket to the driver for a lesser citation, known as a “non-moving” violation. As she was driving away from the traffic stop, the driver displayed her raised middle finger at the police officer. In response to this offensive speech, the police officer immediately initiated a second traffic stop – within 100 yards of the first traffic stop – for the purposes of amending the traffic citation to the original speeding charge. Was it clearly established at the time of the second traffic stop that a police officer could not immediately initiate a second traffic stop, in response to a driver’s offensive speech, to change his original, discretionary decision and issue a citation for the original speeding violation? (i)