Whether the Ninth Circuit departed from this Court's qualified immunity decisions

QUESTIONS PRESENTED A magistrate judge granted Riverside police officers qualified immunity on a § 1983 unlawful arrest claim, finding there was probable cause for the arrests. A divided Ninth Circuit panel reversed. The majority held that the officers lacked probable cause to believe that plaintiffs committed theft when they took a rental mattress from a rehabilitation center, because this was at most a dispute about what the rental contract allowed. The dissenting judge agreed with the magistrate that there was probable cause. On remand, a district court judge found that the lack of probable cause was clearly established and denied qualified immunity. The Ninth Circuit affirmed in a two-paragraph memorandum. It held that the law was clearly established because three prior Ninth Circuit decisions found that disputes over a bill or the right to possess “are civil in nature and ordinarily do not give rise to probable cause to arrest.” The questions presented are: 1. Whether the Ninth Circuit departed from this Court’s qualified immunity decisions by finding the officers violated a clearly-established right without acknowledging the governing standard, defining the right specifically, or identifying a case involving similar facts. ii QUESTIONS PRESENTED—Continued 2. Whether the Ninth Circuit’s rule that “civil disputes cannot give rise to probable cause” is overly broad, as the Eighth Circuit has suggested, and inconsistent with District of Columbia v. Wesby, ___ U.S. __, 188 S. Ct. 577 (2018).