SCOTUS Decides First Police-Shooting Case Since Ferguson. Police Get Qualified Immunity

If you’re a police officer called on to help a woman coping with a serious mental illness, but on arrival, she feels threatened after you use a key to let yourself into her apartment, what do you do? What if, in response to your entry, she grabs a small kitchen knife and yells, “I am going to kill you. I don’t need help”? The Supreme Court decided that if you shoot her multiple times, you get qualified immunity. They were able to avoid answering the question of whether the ADA required them to make accommodations due to her disability since the petitioner (City and County of San Francisco) didn’t argue the issue on appeal. The case is not over, nor is the ADA issue resolved. The case was remanded to the US District Court. Here is a link to the opinion and some commentary on the decision. Don’t forget to look Scalia’s concurrence with whom Justice Kagan concurred. Commentary in
NY Magazine