Kimberly Vaughn as Administrator of the Estate of Mohammad J. Isaifan, Deceased v. Jamie Rea, et al.

In Barnes v. Felix, 605 U.S. 73 (2025), this Court held unanimously that the Fourth Amendment’s totality-ofthe-circumstances inquiry “has no time limit” and that courts may not wear “chronological blinders.” Without acknowledging Barnes, the Sixth Circuit affirmed summary judgment for two officers who killed Mohammad Isaifan with fourteen rounds, the majority of which entered from behind. The sole independent eyewitness testified that Isaifan was walking away from the officers during the shooting, his shoulder never turning back toward them, when the fatal rounds were fired. The court held that this testimony could not create a factual dispute because the witness began watching only after hearing the first shot, and that the officers’ account that Isaifan turned and drew a weapon was therefore treated as undisputed fact.

1. Whether the Sixth Circuit’s rule, that eyewitness testimony to a fatal police shooting cannot create a genuine dispute when the witness did not also observe the moments preceding it, can be reconciled with Barnes’s command that the Fourth Amendment reasonableness inquiry “has no time limit.”

2. Whether the Sixth Circuit’s holding that the officers’ account was “undisputed,” despite eyewitness testimony and forensic evidence to the contrary, is consistent with this Court’s holdings in Tolan v. Cotton, 572 U.S. 650 (2014) (per curiam), and Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242 (1986).