Case Explained: CIRIA, ET AL. V. GERRANS, ET AL.

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Filed: 2026-06-05 Docket: 4:23-cv-02796-KAW The Ninth Circuit reversed the district court’s denial of qualified immunity for San Francisco police officers Arthur Gerrans, James Crowley, and Nicholas J. Rubino in a civil rights action brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The plaintiffs alleged that the officers’ conduct during a 1990–1991 murder investigation violated their Fourteenth Amendment due process right to familial association by causing the thirty-two-year wrongful incarceration of the plaintiff’s father. The court applied the standard for qualified immunity, holding that a government official is entitled to immunity unless they violated “clearly established” statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known. The court determined that while the general right to familial association was recognized prior to the 1990 arrest, the specific violation alleged—where wrongful detention of a father violates the son’s associational rights—was not clearly established at the time of the officers’ conduct. The court noted that case law did not put the officers on notice until *Lee v. City of Los Angeles* (2001) that such specific circumstances constituted a violation. Because the right was not clearly established in 1990 or 1991, the officers are entitled to qualified immunity. As a result of this ruling, the case is remanded to the district court with instructions to dismiss the claims against the individual defendants based on their entitlement to qualified immunity. Do It For The Case Law is a news reporting service. Nothing in this episode constitutes legal advice.