The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of an elderly California woman who was involved in an aggressive police traffic stop in 2019, giving new life to a lawsuit that accuses the officers of excessive force.
The high court sided with Elise Brown in a case that challenged the controversial legal doctrine known as qualified immunity, which largely shields officers from civil liability claims in misconduct cases.
Brown, who is 83 years old and frail, was pulled over in a blue Oldsmobile mistakenly reported stolen. Officers then surrounded the car with weapons drawn, manhandled Brown out of the driver’s seat and forced her on her knees, where she was eventually handcuffed.
Chino Police Department officers contested Brown’s lawsuit, claiming they followed official protocols during the “high-risk” arrest, leading a lower court to dismiss Brown’s excessive force claim, which was brought in 2020.
Earlier this year, however, a federal appeals court reinstated Brown’s lawsuit, ruling that it was constitutional for the plaintiff to sue the police for excessive force, while Monday’s Supreme Court ruling reaffirmed the appeals court decision and breathed new life into Brown’s case.
“Ms. Brown was terrified, humiliated, and emotionally traumatized,” Brown’s lawyer argued before the nine justices. “That conduct was not reasonable; it was extraordinarily dangerous and flatly inconsistent with the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on excessive force.”
The ruling marked a notable shift for the Supreme Court in its handling of recent cases that deal with qualified immunity as fatal police confrontations appear more frequent in communities across the nation, highlighted by the ubiquitous presence of camera phones that popularize the violent encounters on social media.
Until now, the conservative-majority court had rejected several other lawsuits challenging the legal protection granted to police officers as law enforcement…
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