Supreme Court

Justice Sotomayor Rips Into Court's Decision To Unjustly Protect Police Officers

The individual cases and controversies adjudicated before the Supreme Court are still fundamentally linked to the national zeitgeist.

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(Photo by Leigh Vogel/Getty Images)

(Photo by Leigh Vogel/Getty Images)

Is there an epidemic of “unarmed men allegedly reach[ing] for empty waistbands when facing armed officers?” Sonia Sotomayor certainly thinks so, and she wants to do everything she can as a justice on the country’s highest court to stop police officers from “shoot[ing] first and think[ing] later.”

This week, the Supreme Court denied certiorari in a case of alleged police brutality. Houston police office Chris Thompson shot Richardo Salazar-Limon in the back during a traffic stop in 2010, leaving Salazar-Limon crippled. A district court dismissed the case on summary judgment, and the Fifth Circuit affirmed that decision. Justice Sotomayor was upset about the Court’s refusal to hear the case, calling out her colleagues for an unequal application of justice which favors police officers. Her stinging dissent — joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg — points out the Court’s tendency to grant cert in cases where police officers have not received qualified immunity but failing to do so when the inverse is true (citations omitted):

Only Thompson and Salazar-Limon know what happened on that overpass on October 29, 2010. It is possible that Salazar-Limon did something that Thompson reasonably found threatening; it is also possible that Thompson shot an unarmed man in the back without justification. What is clear is that our legal system does not entrust the resolution of this dispute to a judge faced with competing affidavits. The evenhanded administration of justice does not permit such a shortcut. Our failure to correct the error made by the courts below leaves in place a judgment that accepts the word of one party over the word of another. It also continues a disturbing trend regarding the use of this Court’s resources. We have not hesitated to summarily reverse courts for wrongly denying officers the protection of qualified immunity in cases involving the use of force. But we rarely intervene where courts wrongly afford officers the benefit of qualified immunity in these same cases. The erroneous grant of summary judgment in qualified-immunity cases imposes no less harm on “‘society as a whole,’” than does the erroneous denial of summary judgment in such cases. We took one step toward addressing this asymmetry in Tolan. We take one step back today.

Though it was impossible for Justice Samuel Alito interrupt Justice Sotomayor’s written dissent, he did write a concurrence (joined by Justice Clarence Thomas) that takes a decidedly different point of view when it comes to the Court’s record on qualified immunity cases. As the Washington Post reports:

That drew a rebuttal from Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who was joined by Justice Clarence Thomas. Sotomayor cited five cases, Alito wrote, but “in all but one of those cases there was no published dissent.” She “has not identified a single case in which we failed to grant a similar petition filed by an alleged victim of unconstitutional police conduct.”

Of course it was Justice Alito who felt the need to comment on the dissent.

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Cases of police brutality have gained prominence in recent years, heightened undoubtedly by the images and videos of the incidents circulating on social media. It is an issue that is shaping everything from sports to music to fashion to social media to just about everything in between. The individual cases and controversies adjudicated before the Supreme Court are still fundamentally linked to the national zeitgeist, especially as it pertains to such a hot-button issue as police shootings. Justice Sotomayor gets that, and is making an argument for the rest of the Court to get on board.

Sotomayor sees ‘disturbing trend’ of unequal treatment regarding police, alleged victims [Washington Post]

headshotKathryn Rubino is an editor at Above the Law. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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