House-party ruling favors police
Supreme Court also weighs in on environmental disputes
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday said Washington, D.C., police officers acted reasonably in arresting 21 people at a late-night house party a decade ago.
The court ruled unanimously that the officers could not be held liable for making the arrests after they came upon a scene of “utter Bacchanalia,” as Justice Clarence Thomas described it in announcing the decision, at a house party where the homeowner was not present and it was unclear whether the guests had been invited.
“Based on the vagueness and implausibility of the partygoers’ stories, the officers could have reasonably inferred that they were lying and that their lies suggested a guilty mind,” Thomas wrote in his decision for the court. At any rate, the officers had qualified immunity for their actions, the court said.
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor agreed with the outcome of the case but did not go along with all of Thomas’ reasoning.
The case arose in March 2008 after D.C. police officers were called to investigate noise complaints at a brick duplex. The question for the court was whether the officers acted legally and reasonably when they arrested 21 people for trespassing. Also at issue was whether they could still be shielded from the lawsuit and about $1 million in damages even if the officers were wrong and did not meet the “probable cause” standard.
Guests at the party told police they weren’t certain who owned the sparsely furnished home, and they gave conflicting reasons for being there. Some said they were invited by a woman named “Peaches” to a bachelor party. Others said it was a birthday celebration.
“Peaches,” however, was not present. When officers reached the homeowner by phone, he said he had not signed off on a party.
All the charges eventually were dropped, and 16 of the partygoers filed a lawsuit. A federal jury awarded $680,000 in damages — a figure that eventually reached nearly $1 million with the addition of legal costs.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit sided with the partygoers, finding that the officers — Andre Parker and Anthony Campanale — were not immune from legal action for the unlawful arrests. The full D.C. Circuit declined to rehear the case.
Government officials, including police officers, generally are shielded from lawsuits when they carry out their duties in good faith. The justices, who appeared sympathetic to the partygoers, said police need to have the latitude to make judgment calls about suspects and the circumstances they investigate.
“Peaches” had never been identified in court documents or proceedings. But after publicity from the case, people who knew “Peaches” contacted The Washington Post and identified her as Veronica Little, a bartender and entrepreneur who died in 2016. A friend also explained her nickname, saying she was from Georgia.
The case is District of Columbia v. Wesby.
Also on Monday, the Supreme Court weighed in on three environmental cases.
Justices ruled unanimously that litigation over a rule on small streams and wetlands should begin in the lowest level of federal courts, not in the federal courts of appeal.
President Barack Obama’s administration in 2015 redefined “waters of the United States” protected under the Clean Water Act to include smaller creeks and wetlands. The rule has never taken effect because of lawsuits, and it is now under review by President Donald Trump’s administration.
The debate over the rule has remained murky despite two Supreme Court rulings.
Justices also agreed to review a lower-court ruling on a Louisiana site that the federal government called critical habitat for an endangered frog found only in Mississippi.
The government designated a 1,500-acre tract owned by the Weyerhaeuser Co. and others as the only potential breeding ground outside Mississippi for dusky gopher frogs, which spend most of their lives underground.
The Pacific Legal Foundation has called the designation an “unprecedented abuse of the Endangered Species Act,” saying the frogs haven’t lived in Louisiana since 1965. The foundation represents other landowners in the same litigation.
But Collette Adkins, an attorney for the conservation group Center for Biological Diversity, called on the court to uphold the designation.
“The Fish and Wildlife Service followed the unanimous advice of frog experts in deciding to protect essential habitat of these critically endangered frogs,” Adkins said.
The court also left intact a lower-court ruling that declared Alaska’s bearded seal population a threatened species.
Arctic Ocean bearded seals give birth and rear pups on drifting pack ice. In a case appealed by two petroleum industry groups and the state of Alaska, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the National Marine Fisheries Service had acted properly in listing the bearded seals as threatened because of projected sea ice loss over the next 100 years.