Supreme Court Upholds Totality of Circumstances Inquiry Into Reasonableness of Force Under the Fourth Amendment

Los Angeles, Calif. (May 16, 2025) - Executive Summary: The Supreme Court unanimously rejected the Fifth Circuit’s “moment-of-threat” rule in evaluating a police shooting (or other use of force) under the requisite Fourth Amendment excessive force analysis in a decision issued on May 15, 2025. While incorrectly described by some media as an “expansion” of the review standard for Fourth Amendment excessive force claims, the Supreme Court’s opinion was a rejection of the Fifth Circuit’s outlier rule and an upholding of the long-standing Supreme Court precedent – embraced by the majority of circuit courts, including the Ninth Circuit – that courts must evaluate the totality of the circumstances known to the force-wielding officer leading up to that law enforcement officer’s use of force, from the perspective of an objectively reasonable officer, not just some arbitrary temporal subset of those circumstances.

Underlying Facts and Procedural Posture: In the underlying incident, a law enforcement officer initiated a traffic stop based on a radio alert about an automobile on the road with underlying toll violations. During this traffic stop, while rummaging through some papers inside the car, the driver stated that he did not have a license and that the car was a rental in another name. The law enforcement officer told the driver several times to stop “digging around”; the officer also commented that he smelled marijuana, and he asked if there was anything in the car he should know about. The driver responded that he might have some identification in the trunk, and opened the trunk per the law enforcement officer’s instruction while turning off the ignition.

The law enforcement officer, with his right hand resting on his holster, then told the driver to get out of the car. The driver opened the door, but did not exit; instead, the driver turned the ignition back on. The law enforcement officer then unholstered his gun and, as the car began to move forward, jumped onto its bottom doorsill, twice shouting for the driver to stop moving. With no visibility inside the car, because the law enforcement officer’s head was above the roof, the law enforcement officer fired two shots inside of the moving vehicle. The driver was hit, but he managed to stop the car.

The law enforcement officer then radioed for back-up and medical aid, but by the time it arrived, the driver was dead. Of note, the time period of the incident leading up to the driver opening the trunk was less than two minutes, and five seconds elapsed between when the car started moving and when it stopped. Within that five seconds, two seconds passed between the moment the law enforcement officer stepped on the doorsill and the moment he fired his first of two gunshots.

The District Court granted summary judgment to the law enforcement officer, based on the Fifth Circuit’s “much narrower” “moment of threat” approach to analyzing when a use of deadly force is unreasonable. Specifically, under the Fifth Circuit’s “moment of threat” rubric, a court could ask only about the situation existing “at the moment of the threat” that sparked the fatal shooting: whereas the circumstances leading up to that moment were deemed legally irrelevant under that circuit’s precedents. The District Court identified that moment as the two seconds before the law enforcement officer fired his first shot, when he was standing on the doorsill of a moving vehicle, and found that, at that moment, an officer could reasonably think himself at risk of serious harm. The District Court also found that, under Fifth Circuit precedent, it could not consider what transpired up until those last two seconds.

The Fifth Circuit affirmed, stating it was bound by its own “moment-of-threat” doctrine, which confined the excessive force inquiry to whether the officer was in danger at the moment of the threat that resulted in their use of deadly force: though one of the panel judges noted that, but for that doctrine, under the totality of the circumstances, the deadly force could be construed as unreasonable. Thus, any prior events leading up to the shooting, including the actions the officer took, were considered irrelevant under the Fifth Circuit’s “moment-of-threat” precedent.

The Supreme Court granted certiorari to address whether, in resolving Fourth Amendment excessive-force claims, courts may apply the moment-of-threat rule just described.

The Supreme Court’s Opinion and Effect: Citing the long-standing Supreme Court precedent of Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, and Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1, the Supreme Court again found that the inquiry into the reasonableness of police force requires analyzing the totality of circumstances leading up to the use of force that were known to the officer at the time: an analysis which has no arbitrary time limit. While the Supreme Court recognized that the situation at the precise time of the shooting will often be what matters most, earlier facts and circumstances may bear on how a reasonable officer would have responded to such earlier facts, and to later-learned, pre-force facts. Accordingly, the Fifth Circuit’s extremely limiting “moment-of-threat” rule potentially erased the full context of the incident and conflicts with the Supreme Court’s instruction to analyze the totality of the circumstances leading up to the use of force that were known to the officer at the time.

While in the Fifth Circuit the Barnes opinion thus represents nothing short of a revolution that will cause more police deadly force cases to go to trial, for the majority of circuits (including the Ninth Circuit and California), the Barnes case represents nothing more than a reiteration of longstanding precepts governing police use of force cases. Plumhoff v. Rickard, 572 U.S. 765 (2014); Wilkinson v. Torres, 610 F.3d 546 (9th Cir. 2010). Additionally, in some ways, the language of Barnes – and particularly its concurrence – bolsters officer-favorable precepts about: (1) the relevant totality of the circumstances including facts known to the force-wielding officer leading up to the use of force; (2) that threat analysis cannot be limited to the moments immediately preceding a use of force – e.g., a dangerous vehicle pursuit ending with the car stalled but still seeming aggressive must consider the prior pursuit as supporting the reasonableness of the deadly threat perceived by the officer; and (3) the dangers to the officer cannot be overlooked because seemingly mundane law enforcement encounters can, in a split-second, become much more dangerous. Barnes v. Felix, 605 U.S. __ (2025) Case No. 23-1239, Slip Op. at 5-7; id. at 12-17 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring).

Because the Fifth Circuit was an outlier with its “moment-of-threat” rule for police deadly force cases, the Barnes decision affirms and continues the Supreme Court precedent of the broader totality of circumstances inquiry as used by the Ninth Circuit. Specifically, the Ninth Circuit has consistently held that, when analyzing reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment, the question is whether the officers’ actions are objectively reasonable, from the perspective of a reasonable officer, in light of the facts and circumstances confronting known to the force-wielding officer at the time: which necessarily includes all circumstances known to the officer leading up to the use of force.

As an example in, Mattos v. Agarano, 661 F.3d 433, 449-450 (9th Cir. 2011), the Ninth Circuit assessed reasonableness of force based on the totality of circumstances, including not only the moment of the use force, but “the danger that the overall situation posed to the officers’ safety and what effect that has on the reasonableness of the officers’ action,” including why the officers were at the scene, their initial encounter with the suspect, and the context of the 9-1-1 call. This is in line with the Supreme Court’s totality of circumstances inquiry and a far cry from the two seconds considered by the underlying Fifth Circuit courts in Barnes.

While this decision does not negatively impact law enforcement under Ninth Circuit jurisdiction at this time, public entities should nonetheless be vigilant in ensuring this decision is not misconstrued to broaden the already existent totality of the circumstances inquiry to include irrelevant factors that had no bearing on an officer’s use of force: such as facts unknown to the force-wielding officer at the time, or facts learned by that officer only after the force was used. Police agencies should also cite to the language of Barnes (a rare unanimous decision), and its concurrence, to counter those courts who otherwise understate the danger to the officer or community from evasion or disobedience of police officers, who engage in 20/20 hindsight whitewashing by application of facts unknown to the officer at the time, or who otherwise diminish the dangers officers face, and necessity of split-second decision-making, as they vigilantly strive to enforce our laws and keep our communities safe under tense and uncertain circumstances.

For more information on this decision, contact the authors of this alert. Visit our Civil Rights & Police Litigation Defense Task Force page to learn more about our capabilities in this area.