Qualified immunity knocks out warrantless search and too-cold air conditioning case

It is a cardinal rule of federal appellate practice that you cannot take up an appeal until the entire case is over, and every last issue is resolved. One exception to that rule is when public defendants are seeking qualified immunity, which is the legal principle that you can't sue police officers and other public employees if they did not violate clearly-established law. This exception allows us to honor the rule that qualified immunity should be resolved as early in the case as possible, even if that means you can appeal the denial of such immunity before the parties even start discovery.

The case is Shakir v. Stankye, a summary order issued on March 24. This case alleges that the police officer unlawfully executed an arrest warrant, as follows: the police came to plaintiff's home and repeatedly knocked on the door while plaintiff remained in the house for 10 to 15 minutes. After they finally arrested plaintiff, they asked about the whereabouts of his son, A.S., who was living with plaintiff's mother. Plaintiff would not tell the police where his son was, so the police entered plaintiff's home and found A.S. and escorted him out. The police were looking for A.S. because there was an allegation that plaintiff had sexually abused him.

Can plaintiff proceed with this suit? The police say they had to enter the house without a warrant under the "exigent circumstances" exception to the warrant rule, which holds that the police can proceed without a warrant if necessary to protect someone from imminent harm and there is no time to get a warrant. But plaintiff cannot proceed with the case because there is no case on point that holds that the police violated the Fourth Amendment in entering the house without a warrant. Instead, "the circumstances here were such that Stankye could reasonably believe that A.S. was inside Shakir's home and in need of assistance, a sufficient basis to conduct a warrantless search." Plaintiff's refusal to tell the police where A.S. was supported the police officer's reasonable belief that A.S. was inside the home. It was also reasonable for the police to believe that A.S. was in need of assistance, since he had just arrested plaintiff for child sexual abuse. Since the officer gets qualified immunity, the Court of Appeals (Jacobs, Hall and Livingston) does not determine whether plaintiff's underlying rights were violated; since the law was not clearly-established that plaintiff's rights were in fact violated that day, there is no point in determining whether, absent the qualified immunity inquiry, the officer violated plaintiff's rights.

Plaintiff also sues the officer for violating his right to constitutional conditions of confinement at the police headquarters. This claim also fails under the qualified immunity test, since plaintiff cannot show the officer violated clearly-established law in (1) requiring him to strip to his underwear to show he was not armed; (2) taunting plaintiff about his high bail; (3) turning the air conditioning in his cell to the maximum, causing plaintiff to get sick. The main issue for plaintiff is the air conditioning, but no court has yet held that brief exposure to cold violates the Constitution. While cases hold that prolonged exposure to bitter cold may violate a prisoner's constitutional rights, that is not close enough to plaintiff's case to show that the officer was on notice that he was violating the Constitution. So that claim is dismissed, as well.