A Vermont police officer who used a restraint technique known to be painful to remove a protester from the state capitol in 2015 is protected from a civil rights lawsuit under qualified immunity, the US Supreme Court said.
The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit had found the officer’s use of a rear wristlock fell outside the scope of qualified immunity under existing circuit precedent. In a per curiam opinion Monday, the majority of justices voted to summarily reverse the appeals court, concluding that reasonable officials would not interpret the law to bar using a “routine wristlock to move a resistant protester.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented. Sotomayor wrote that the court had turned qualified immunity into an “absolute shield for law enforcement officers.”
Separately, the justices declined to review a decision by the Fifth Circuit granting qualified immunity to officials in Texas accused of targeting a journalist for arrest over disagreements with her reporting.
The cases are Jacob Zorn v. Shela Linton, U.S., No. 25-297 and Priscilla Villarreal v. Isidro Alaniz, U.S., No. 25-29, denied cert on 3/23/26.
