Draft:Reichle v. Howards

Reichle v. Howards, 566 U.S. ___ (2012), is a case in which the United States Supreme Court granted qualified immunity to Secret Service agents who arrested Steven Howards after he confronted Dick Cheney, the Vice President of the United States. Howards, a critic of the Iraq War, approached Cheney at a meet-and-greet at a mall and told him that the George W. Bush administration's "policies in Iraq [were] disgusting". He then made limited physical contact with Cheney's shoulder; the action has been various described as a pat, slap, or strike. Agents arrested Howards, who falsely claimed to have not touched Cheney; Colorado prosecutors charged him with harassment but later dropped the charges. Howards subsequently sued the agents under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging unlawful search and seizure.

The Supreme Court found that because there was no clearly established prohibition on retaliatory arrest in cases where probable cause existed, the agents were entitled to qualified immunity regardless of whether the arrest was retaliatory. They considered, but ultimately did not rule on, the question of whether such a prohibition exists. They considered the same question in 2018 in Lozman v. City of Riviera Beach, and again avoided a conclusive answer, ruling in plaintiff Fane Lozman's favor on very narrow grounds. The matter was ultimately decided in Nieves v. Bartlett (2019), in which the court ruled that probable cause does generally preclude a claim of retaliatory arrest, with limited exceptions.

Background

Prior jurisprudence

42 U.S.C. § 1983 allows plaintiffs in United States federal courts to seek monetary damages for violations of their civil rights. In Harlow v. Fitzgerald (1982), the United States Supreme Court broadened the qualified immunity it had historically given executive officials under § 1983, granting immunity for all defendants whose "conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known". Subsequent jurisprudence has broadened protections for executive officials further, for instance by allowing judges to, when granting qualified immunity, not rule on the underlying civil rights question. The Supreme Court has consistently ruled against plaintiffs in § 1983 cases.