Gregory V. Tucker v. City of Shreveport, Louisiana, et al.

Respondents are police officers who tackled, punched, and kicked Petitioner Gregory Tucker after they pulled him over for non-functioning brake and license plate lights. When Mr. Tucker brought suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 challenging Respondents’ use of excessive force, the district court denied the officers’ summary judgment motion seeking qualified immunity. A panel majority of the Fifth Circuit reversed, opining that the extant law did not clearly establish that repeatedly beating and kicking an unarmed, compliant man was excessive. In making that decision, the Fifth Circuit required petitioner to identify precedent with nearly identical facts to overcome the qualified immunity defense. The questions presented are:

1. Whether the Fifth Circuit’s holding conflicts with Taylor v. Riojas, which held that officials responsible for violating an individual’s constitutional rights could have fair warning that their actions were unconstitutional, even if there is no precedent containing the same facts, and this Court’s decisions that have explicitly held that precedent need not be fundamentally similar or contain materially similar facts to give officers fair warning.

2. Whether police officers are entitled to qualified immunity so long as there is no prior caselaw declaring their actions unconstitutional in an identical fact pattern in the same circuit, as the Fifth and Eighth Circuit have held, or whether