Pina v. Dominguez

1 Cite as: 604 U. S. ____ (2025)
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LITO, J., dissenting
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
MICHAEL PINA v. ESTATE OF JACOB DOMINGUEZ
ON PETITION FOR WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED
STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
No. 24–152. Decided February 24, 2025
The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied.
J
USTICE ALITO, with whom JUSTICE THOMAS joins, dis-
senting from the denial of certiorari.
To overcome qualified immunity, a party must show that
an official violated a federal right that “was ‘clearly estab-
lished’ at the time of [the] alleged misconduct.” Pearson v.
Callahan, 555 U. S. 223, 232 (2009). This requirement en-
sures that officials are not subject to the burdens of litiga-
tion or held liable for conduct without notice that such con-
duct is unlawful. See Kisela v. Hughes, 584 U. S. 100, 104
(2018) (per curiam); Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U. S. 730, 739
(2002). Needless to say, a judicial decision postdating an
official’s alleged misconduct is of no use in determining
what was “clearly established” at the time. The courts
below badly fumbled this basic tenet of our qualified-
immunity doctrine by treating a later-in-time Circuit prec-
edent as a basis for the existence of “clearly established
law.” I would grant the petitioner’s request for summary
reversal to correct this flagrant error.
In 2017, officers of the San Jose Police Department pro-
cured an arrest warrant for Jacob Dominguez, a suspect in
an armed robbery of a gas station. Based on information
from a confidential informant, officers believed Dominguez
was armed with a revolver. Once the officers had found
Dominguez in his vehicle, Officer Michael Pina ordered him
to put his hands up. Dominguez complied, but he then
“ ‘quickly dropped his hands’” out of sight and “‘moved for-
ward.’” App. to Pet. for Cert. 43a. That led Officer Pina to

2 PINA v. ESTATE OF DOMINGUEZ
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LITO, J., dissenting
believe Dominguez was reaching for a firearm. And when
Dominguez quickly leaned back, Officer Pina shot and
killed him. The whole encounter lasted less than one mi-
nute.
Dominguez’s estate sued Officer Pina under Rev. Stat.
§1979, 42 U. S. C. §1983, and a jury found Officer Pina lia-
ble for excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amend-
ment. The jury also returned a special interrogatory, an-
swering “yes” to the question, “Did decedent Jacob
Dominguez drop his hands and lean forward before Michael
Pina fired his weapon?” App. to Pet. for Cert. 58a. Follow-
ing trial, Officer Pina moved for judgment as a matter of
law on qualified-immunity grounds, but the District Court
denied his motion, anchoring its clearly-established-law in-
quiry in Peck v. Montoya, 51 F. 4th 877 (CA9 2022). See
App. to Pet. for Cert. 47a–49a.
The Ninth Circuit affirmed in an unpublished decision.
Like the District Court, the Ninth Circuit relied on its deci-
sion in Peck. It viewed that decision as providing sufficient
evidence that Officer Pina “violated Dominguez’s Fourth
Amendment right under clearly established law” and was
thus “not entitled to qualified immunity.” App. to Pet. for
Cert. 7a.
The lower courts made a serious misstep in their analy-
sis. Even if it is assumed that controlling Circuit precedent
may constitute clearly established law, Peck, a 2022 deci-
sion, was not the law in the Ninth Circuit when the events
of this case unfolded in 2017. As such, Peck, “decided after
the shooting at issue, is of no use in the clearly established
inquiry.” City of Tahlequah v. Bond, 595 U. S. 9, 13 (2021).
Perhaps realizing that reliance on Peck was anachronis-
tic, the lower courts tried to backpedal. The District Court
acknowledged that “Peck was decided after the events that
occurred in our case,” but it asserted that “Peck looked to
Cruz v. City of Anaheim,” a 2014 decision. App. to Pet. for
Cert. 47a–48a (citing 765 F. 3d 1076 (CA9 2014)). And the

3 Cite as: 604 U. S. ____ (2025)
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LITO, J., dissenting
Ninth Circuit sneaked into a footnote of its unpublished de-
cision the same suggestion that Peck merely identified “the
law that Cruz clearly established.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 7a,
n. 1.
Those ham-fisted rescue efforts rest on a misreading of
Cruz. If Cruz itself could serve as the basis for clearly es-
tablished law, then the Ninth Circuit presumably could
have cited it directly instead of shunting it to a footnote.
But unsurprisingly, Cruz alone does not suffice. In that
case, officers stopped an allegedly armed suspect in his ve-
hicle and used deadly force when the suspect reached for
his waistband. There, the Ninth Circuit held that “[i]t
would be unquestionably reasonable for police to shoot a
suspect . . . if he reaches for a gun in his waistband, or even
if he reaches there for some other reason.” 765 F. 3d, at
1078. In the lower courts’ view, Peck simply restated Cruz’s
conclusion “that officers may not fire at a suspect . . . absent
some reason to believe that the suspect will soon access or
use [a] weapon.” 51 F. 4th, at 888. But that is not a mere
gloss on Cruz. Rather, Peck narrowed Cruz’s holding by
eliminating the suggestion that an officer’s use of force may
be reasonable if a suspect “reaches” for his waistband “for
some other reason.” Cruz, 765 F. 3d, at 1078. That altera-
tion may very well have made a difference here.* Read in
its proper light, Peck is not a restatement of the law set
forth in Cruz. If Peck is removed from the picture, the lower
courts would have failed to identify any clearly established
law that Officer Pina allegedly violated.
——————
*Although the courts below did not directly rely on it as a basis of
clearly established law, Cruz lends support to Officer Pina’s use of force.
To start, I am skeptical that the Ninth Circuit gave adequate weight to
the jury’s special interrogatory that Dominguez dropped his hands and
leaned forward. Even assuming Dominguez was not reaching for a fire-
arm as the Ninth Circuit assumed, App. to Pet. for Cert. 4a, the fact that
he was reaching down “for some other reason” could certainly constitute
the sort of furtive movement that justifies the use of force in a fast-
moving police encounter, Cruz v. Anaheim, 765 F. 3d 1076, 1078 (2014).

4 PINA v. ESTATE OF DOMINGUEZ
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LITO, J., dissenting
* * *
The decisions below made more than a trifling mistake.
In the Fourth Amendment context, the clearly-established-
law requirement provides essential notice at the “‘hazy bor-
der between excessive and acceptable force.’” Kisela, 584
U. S., at 105 (quoting Mullenix v. Luna, 577 U. S. 7, 18
(2015) (per curiam)). But by holding an officer liable based
on a judicial precedent issued after the events in question,
the courts below ran roughshod over this key notice-bearing
feature of our qualified-immunity jurisprudence.
I would summarily reverse the judgment below and reit-
erate a point that this Court has made time and again: a
judicial decision can serve as a basis for clearly established
law only if it predates the allegedly unlawful conduct. See
Bond, 595 U. S., at 13; Brosseau v. Haugen, 543 U. S. 194,
198, 200, n. 4 (2004) (per curiam); Kisela, 584 U. S., at 104;
Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U. S. 731, 741 (2011). The Court
unfortunately fails to take that step, so I must respectfully
dissent.