Bethlehem Manor Village, LLC v. Robert J. Donchez, former Mayor of the City of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

Multiple Justices have called on this Court to revisit its jurisprudence on qualified immunity. See N.S., only child of decedent Stokes v. Kansas City Bd. of Police Commissioners, 143 S. Ct. 2422, 2424 (2023) (Sotomayor, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari); Baxter v. Bracey, 140 S. Ct. 1862, 1862 (2020) (Thomas, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari). The panel below granted qualified immunity to Respondent, a mayor who sustained a prolonged campaign to prevent Petitioner from opening a hospital on its property for psychiatric patients simply because the Mayor did not want “those people” in his city. See Pet. App. 28–29a. The questions presented are:

1. Whether qualified immunity, which conflicts with both the text and history of Section 1983, should be abrogated for Section 1983 claims.

2. Whether the panel’s insistence on prior caselaw involving fundamentally similar facts contravenes this Court’s precedents, which hold that officials can be on notice that their conduct violates established law even in novel factual circumstances.