ZORN v. LINTON

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

JACOB P. ZORN v. SHELA M. LINTON

on petition for writ of certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the second circuit

 Justice Sotomayor, with whom Justice Kagan and Justice Jackson join, dissenting.

 Sergeant Jacob Zorn used a “ ‘pain compliance technique’ ” called a rear wristlock on Shela Linton, a nonviolent protestor who was peacefully demonstrating at a sit-in in the Vermont capitol. 135 F. 4th 19, 24–25 CA2 (2025). The Second Circuit held that Zorn was not entitled to qualified immunity on Linton’s Fourth Amendment excessive force claim, at least at the summary judgment stage, because prior Circuit precedent had clearly established that using a rear wristlock against a nonviolent protestor would violate the protestor’s constitutional rights. That decision was not erroneous, and certainly not so clearly erroneous as to warrant the “extraordinary remedy of a summary reversal.” Major League Baseball Players Assn. v. Garvey, 532 U. S. 504, 512–513 (2001) (Stevens, J., dissenting). I respectfully dissent.

I

 Given that this case is at the summary judgment stage, the Court must “view the evidence . . . in the light most favorable to” Linton, the nonmovant, “with respect to the central facts of the case.” Tolan v. Cotton, 572 U. S. 650, 657 (2014) (per curiam). Before Sergeant Zorn’s interaction with Linton, officers had arrested 15 or 16 demonstrators: The “officers tapp[ed] some of the demonstrators’ shoulders or sp[oke] briefly with them before the officers placed them under arrest.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 44 (App.). “Some of the arrestees voluntarily stood up after officers approached  them,” while the “[o]fficers lifted the demonstrators who did not stand up voluntarily and escorted, dragged, or carried them out of the chamber.” Ibid. “Consistent with the concept of a nonviolent sit-in protest, . . . none of [the demonstrators] attacked the officers or used any form of violence.” Id., at 45. One officer, Trooper Richardson, described the “level of safety threat in the environment [as] ‘[v]ery low.’ ” Ibid. (alteration in original).

 When Zorn and Richardson first approached Linton, they “did not issue any ‘clear request or command,’ ” and the “video evidence appears to indicate that” one of them said only, “ ‘ma’am?’ ” Id., at 46. About five seconds later, Zorn and Richardson unlinked Linton’s arms from the other demonstrators’ arms. Without any warning—indeed, without saying another word to Linton—Zorn placed Linton’s left arm into a rear wristlock by twisting her arm and shoulder, “snapp[ing]” her wrist, and “ ‘forc[ing] it down and to the rear.’ ” Id., at 47; Plaintiff’s Supp. Affidavit in No. 5:18–cv–5 (D Vt.), ECF Doc. 74–3, p. 2. Linton immediately exclaimed, “ ‘ow, ow, ow!’ ” App. 47. Only then did Zorn instruct Linton to “ ‘please stand up.’ ” Id., at 48.

 Linton did not stand up, at which point Zorn further twisted Linton’s arm. “Linton’s face contorted in pain as she stated, ‘my arm!’ or ‘don’t twist my arm!’ ” Ibid. Zorn asked Linton to stand up several more times. Linton refused and replied: “ ‘You’re hurting me.’ ” Ibid. Zorn then warned Linton: “ ‘I’m going to ask you one more time . . . and then I will use more pain compliance.’ ” Ibid. Linton repeated that Zorn was “ ‘hurting’ ” her and did not move to stand up. Id., at 49. Zorn then applied pressure to Linton’s wrist and lifted her upward, causing Linton to “contor[t] her face in pain and . . . scream very loudly.” Ibid. Zorn whispered to her that “she should have called her legislator.” Ibid.

 After being hauled to her feet, Linton collapsed back onto the floor “due to pain and feeling weak.” Id., at 50. Zorn,  Richardson, and a third officer “lifted” her “by her arms and legs and carried her out of the House chamber” without further use of a rear wristlock or any other pain-compliance technique. Id., at 51. As a result of this event, Linton “suffered permanent damage to her left wrist and shoulder” and has been “diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and anxiety.” 135 F. 4th, at 25.

II

 Officers are not entitled to qualified immunity if “(1) they violated a federal statutory or constitutional right, and (2) the unlawfulness of their conduct was ‘clearly established at the time.’ ” District of Columbia v. Wesby, 583 U. S. 48, 62–63 (2018). The Second Circuit correctly held that summary judgment must be denied because a jury could find that Zorn violated Linton’s clearly established Fourth Amendment rights.

A

 Starting with the first prong of the qualified immunity analysis, Linton contends that Zorn violated her Fourth Amendment rights by using excessive force during her arrest. Determining whether a given use of force is excessive requires a “careful balancing of ‘ “the nature and quality of the intrusion on the individual’s Fourth Amendment interests” ’ against the countervailing governmental interests at stake.” Graham v. Connor, 490 U. S. 386, 396 (1989). The inquiry depends on the “ ‘totality of the circumstances,’ ” “including the severity of the crime at issue, whether the suspect poses an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others, . . . whether [s]he is actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight,” ibid., the “relationship between the need for the use of force and the amount of force used[, and] the extent of [her] injury,” Kingsley v. Hendrickson, 576 U. S. 389, 397 (2015).

  Here, the Second Circuit rightly concluded that a reasonable jury could find that Zorn’s use of force was excessive in violation of the Fourth Amendment. See 135 F. 4th, at 36. First, the crime of trespass for which Linton was arrested is not “ ‘particularly severe.’ ” Ibid. Second, it is undisputed that the threat to safety posed by Linton was relatively low. Trooper Richardson described the level of safety risk as “ ‘[v]ery low.’ ” Ibid. The protestors also “passed through security (and therefore must have been considered to be unarmed), did not significantly outnumber police,” and were “not accused of being volatile or violent.” Ibid. Third, it is also undisputed that Linton “suffered permanent loss of motion in her left wrist and shoulder as a result of the incident.” Ibid. Fourth, there is a material dispute of fact as to whether Linton was actively resisting arrest, and a jury reasonably could conclude that Linton was only passively resisting and that her failure to comply was because she was “in too much pain to do so.” Id., at 37. Finally, a jury also reasonably could conclude that the use of pain compliance was not “reasonably related to any need to use force.” Id., at 38. The officers purportedly “did not use pain compliance techniques in the arrests of . . . fellow protestors,” and Linton contends that “the Vermont State Police use-of-force policy does not suggest . . . us[ing] pain compliance techniques in response to passive resistance.” Ibid. Further, Zorn’s own expert stated that “the general police practice in response to passive resistance is ‘low level physical contact . . . with little or no pain.’ ” Ibid. Taken together, a jury could reasonably conclude that Zorn used excessive force in violation of Linton’s Fourth Amendment rights.

B

 The second prong of the qualified immunity analysis asks whether the “unlawfulness of [the official’s] conduct was ‘clearly established at the time,’ ” Wesby, 583 U. S., at 63, which requires assessing whether the “contours of the right  [are] sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right,” Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U. S. 635, 640 (1987). “[E]arlier cases involving ‘fundamentally similar’ facts can provide especially strong support for a conclusion that the law is clearly established,” Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U. S. 730, 741 (2002), but there need not be a “ ‘ “case directly on point,” ’ ” White v. Pauly, 580 U. S. 73, 79 (2017) (per curiam).

 In addition to the long-established principle that officers may use only the “amount of force that is necessary in a particular situation,” Graham, 490 U. S., at 397, the Second Circuit’s prior case, Amnesty America v. West Hartford, 361 F. 3d 113 (CA2 2004), “clearly establish[ed] that the gratuitous use of pain compliance techniques—such as a rear-wristlock—on a protestor who is passively resisting arrest constitutes excessive force.” 135 F. 4th, at 35. In that case, officers used multiple forms of force to arrest anti-abortion protestors who had chained themselves together in front of a women’s center. Amnesty America, 361 F. 3d, at 118. The plaintiffs alleged that the officers had used excessive force to remove them, including by using a rear wristlock and other pain compliance techniques. Ibid. Two plaintiffs in that case were treated much like Linton was: Officers “lift[ed] and pull[ed]” them off the floor “by pressing their wrists back against their forearms in a way that caused lasting damage.” Id., at 123. The Circuit then held that, under past cases, “allegations involving comparable amounts of force used during the arrest of a nonviolent suspect are sufficient to allow a reasonable factfinder to conclude that the force used was excessive.” Id., at 123–124.

 Amnesty America’s specific discussion of rear wristlocks thus clearly established that using a rear wristlock against a nonviolent, passively resisting protestor could constitute excessive force. It therefore put Zorn on notice, to a “high ‘degree of specificity,’ ” Wesby, 583 U. S., at 63, that using the same technique against a passively resisting protestor  like Linton would expose him to liability for violating Linton’s Fourth Amendment rights.

C

 The Court’s attempts to distinguish Amnesty America are mistaken. It first claims that Amnesty America differs from this case because the officers there did not give “any warning” to the protestors, while Zorn “repeatedly warned Linton” here. Ante, at 4–5. That distinction misrepresents both cases. Amnesty America, in fact, did involve warnings: It observed that the “police purportedly employed” the pain-compliance techniques “only after they were unsuccessful in verbally convincing protestors to move.” 361 F. 3d, at 119. By comparison, in this case, construing the evidence in favor of Linton (as is required), Zorn “did not issue any ‘clear request or command’ ” before applying a rear wristlock and began asking her to stand only after he had initiated the wristlock. App. 46; see ECF Doc. 74–3, p. 2 (Linton “was not given warning before [Zorn] initiated the use of pain compliance”). Amnesty America thus involved “ ‘an officer acting under similar circumstances,’ ” Escondido v. Emmons, 586 U. S. 38, 43 (2019) (per curiam), and put Zorn on notice that his actions would violate established law.

 It is true that, after initiating the wristlock, Zorn warned Linton that he would use “ ‘more pain compliance’ ” if she did not stand up, App. 48, whereas the Amnesty America opinion does not specify whether similar warnings were given after the initiation of the wristlocks. If that is the difference on which the majority relies, the majority is essentially requiring Linton to find a factually identical case, a requirement that this Court has repeatedly rejected. See, e.g., Anderson, 483 U. S., at 640 (“This is not to say that an official action is protected by qualified immunity unless the very action in question has previously been held unlawful”); Hope, 536 U. S., at 741 (explaining that “ ‘fundamentally similar’ ” cases can be helpful but are not necessary).

  The majority also suggests that Amnesty America considered a “wide range” of conduct, implying that it did not specifically address rear wristlocks like the one at issue here. Ante, at 4. That, too, is inconsistent with the actual opinion, which recognized that each plaintiff had “standing to assert only those constitutional deprivations that they themselves [were] alleged to have suffered” and specifically identified the use of a rear wristlock against some passively resisting protestors as “sufficient to allow a reasonable factfinder to conclude that the force used was excessive.” 361 F. 3d, at 123–124, and n. 6.

 The Court next reasons that Amnesty America did not clearly establish any law because it stated that while a “reasonable jury could . . . find that the officers” used excessive force, it was also “entirely possible that a reasonable jury would find . . . that the police officers’ use of force was objectively reasonable given the circumstances and the plaintiffs’ resistance techniques.” Id., at 124; see ante, at 4–5. These statements in Amnesty America, however, reflect that the Second Circuit was reviewing a district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the defendants where there was factual uncertainty. In reversing the grant of summary judgment, the Second Circuit held that if the plaintiffs’ allegations were true, they would be “sufficient to allow a reasonable factfinder to conclude that the force used was excessive,” but it found that there were material disputes on “issues of fact” that could not be resolved at summary judgment. 361 F. 3d, at 123–124. Thus, when Amnesty America stated that a reasonable jury could rule for the officers, it was merely acknowledging the reality that the jury might well resolve those material factual disputes in favor of the defendants and find that the officers’ use of force, under the circumstances that truly occurred, was not excessive. Id., at 124. That possibility, however, does not change the fact that the Second Circuit held the use of a wristlock could be excessive if events had  transpired the way plaintiffs alleged they had in that case. See 135 F. 4th, at 33. Indeed, the Second Circuit has long held that “a vacatur of a grant of summary judgment and a remand in light of the existence of genuine issues of material fact” may clearly establish a constitutional violation, id., at 34, and the dissent below agreed, id., at 40 (Cabranes, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part).

 At bottom, the majority’s analysis rests on the assumption that the law can be clearly established only by factually identical “ ‘ “case[s] directly on point,” ’ ” despite the Court’s rejection of such a standard. White, 580 U. S., at 79. Instead, it is “enough that governing law places ‘the constitutionality of the officer’s conduct beyond debate.’ ” Kisela v. Hughes, 584 U. S. 100, 120 (2018) (Sotomayor, J., dissenting) (quoting Wesby, 583 U. S., at 63). Here, taking the facts in the light most favorable to Linton, it is “beyond debate” that Zorn’s use of pain compliance against the passively resisting Linton was excessive. Accordingly, Zorn was not entitled to summary judgment based on qualified immunity.

*  *  *

 For the foregoing reasons, the Second Circuit did not err in holding that Zorn is not entitled to qualified immunity at this stage. At the very least, the decision below was not so wrong as to warrant the “extraordinary remedy of a summary reversal.” Garvey, 532 U. S., at 512–513 (Stevens, J., dissenting). Relying on disputed facts, the Court today simply disagrees with how the Second Circuit applied a correctly stated legal standard (the requirement that law  be established to “ ‘a high degree of specificity’ ” in the  qualified immunity analysis) to this particular set of facts. 135 F. 4th, at 32 (quoting Wesby, 583 U. S., at 63). That is a routine, and nowhere near extraordinary, dispute that did not require the Court’s intervention.

 In the past, I have noted the “troubling asymmetry” in this Court’s “unflinching willingness ‘to summarily reverse  courts for wrongly denying officers the protection of qualified immunity’ but ‘rarely interven[ing] where courts wrongly afford officers the benefit of qualified immunity.’ ” Kisela, 584 U. S., at 121 (Sotomayor, J., dissenting). This case unfortunately represents a resurgence and perpetuation of this “one-sided approach to qualified immunity” that “transforms the doctrine into an absolute shield for law enforcement officers, gutting the deterrent effect of the Fourth Amendment.” Ibid. The majority today gives officers license to inflict gratuitous pain on a nonviolent protestor even where there is no threat to officer safety or any other reason to do so. That is plainly inconsistent with the Fourth Amendment’s fundamental guarantee that officers may only use “the amount of force that is necessary” under the circumstances. Graham, 490 U. S., at 396. Therefore, I respectfully dissent.