Shannon Deasey, et al. v. Daniella Slater, et al.

As this Court recently explained in District of Columbia v. Wesby, 138 S. Ct. 577, 589-590, 199 L.Ed.2d 453 (2018), “[u]nder our precedents, officers are entitled to qualified immunity under §1983 unless (1) they violated a federal statutory or constitutional right, and (2) the unlawfulness of their conduct was ‘clearly established at the time.’ . . . [¶] To be clearly established, a legal principle must have a sufficiently clear foundation in then-existing precedent. . . . [¶] The ‘clearly established’ standard also requires that the legal principle clearly prohibit the officer’s conduct in the particular circumstances before him. The rule’s contours must be so well defined that it is ‘clear to a reasonable officer that his conduct was unlawful in the situation he confronted.’ This requires a high ‘degree of specificity.’ ” (Citations omitted.) The Ninth Circuit holds that the law is “clearly established” if there is a “sufficiently analogous” case to the one before the Court, and it applied that standard to the present case in determining that the district court erred in finding that Petitioners were entitled to qualified immunity. In contrast, the Seventh Circuit requires more, that there be a “closely analogous case,” a position explicitly rejected by the Ninth Circuit. This petition presents the question whether, for purposes of qualified immunity, a merely “sufficiently analogous” case is enough to show that the law is “clearly established”, or if something more is required, i.e., a “closely analogous” case finding the alleged violation unlawful?