K9 De La Policia

Based on an initial read, I find today’s decision in Camreta v. Greene quite puzzling; to my mind, the dissent has the much better of the argument. In Camreta, the Court agreed to review a decision of the Ninth Circuit in which the Ninth Circuit rejected a Fourth Amendment civil suit filed against government officials. The Ninth Circuit’s ruling had two steps: first, it ruled that the government practice violated the Fourth Amendment; and second, it ruled that the government officials were entitled to qualified immunity. The winning party below (the government) then sought review of the first step (the Fourth Amendment ruling) which had no impact on the outcome of the case. One of the questions in the case was whether a winning party has Article III standing to seek review of adverse part of an opinion in a decision ultimately in its favor.

In today’s majority opinion by Justice Kagan, the Court rules that the case was moot for other reasons, but then goes on to conclude anyway that yes, a winning party has standing to seek Supreme Court review of adverse language in some cases. Specifically, as is the case here, there is Article III standing when the “immunized [government] officials seek to challenge a determination that their conduct violated

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