Qualified Immunity and Interlocutory Fact-Finding in the Courts of Appeals

By Mark R. Brown.

In Ashcroft v. Iqbal, the Court held that a district court decision denying defendants’ motion to dismiss “turned on an issue of law and rejected the defense of qualified immunity,” and was therefore immediately appealable under the collateral order doctrine that has been applied to purely legal questions tied into denials of qualified immunity. The Supreme Court in Iqbal rejected the plaintiff’s contention that “a qualified immunity appeal based solely on the complaint’s failure to state a claim” —rather than on the “ultimate” qualified immunity issue of whether the acts allegedly committed by the defendants constituted a violation of clearly established law—“is not a proper subject of interlocutory jurisdiction.” “[A]ppellate jurisdiction is not so strictly confined,” the Court concluded.

The Court distinguished its previous decision in Johnson v. Jones, which held that appellate courts hearing qualified immunity defenses on interlocutory appeal should not address factual disputes. “Evaluating the sufficiency of a complaint is not a ‘fact-based’ question of law,” the Iqbal Court concluded, and therefore “the problem the Court sought to avoid in Johnson is not implicated here.”
[keep reading]