The U.S. Supreme Court on March 23 ruled 6–3 that qualified immunity prevents a protester from suing a police officer for allegedly using excessive force during an arrest at a state capitol.

Qualified immunity, a rule created by the courts, shields government officials, including police officers, from individual liability unless the wrongdoer violated a clearly established right. Civil libertarians have become increasingly critical of qualified immunity in recent years, saying it allows government officials to escape liability for sometimes egregious wrongdoing.

The high court’s new ruling in Zorn v. Linton took the form of an unsigned opinion.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor filed a dissenting opinion, which was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The case goes back to Jan. 8, 2015, when the respondent, Shela Linton, attended a sit-in at the Vermont Capitol to demand universal health care. The official occasion was the inauguration of then-Gov. Peter Shumlin.

Linton said she intended to refuse to leave and expected to be removed by force, according to the opinion.

“That’s the point of the sit-in part of the protest,” she later said.

As the Capitol closed for the day, police officers informed Linton and the other protesters that they could face trespassing charges. They declined to leave, and the police began arresting them one at a time.

Sgt. Jacob Zorn asked Linton to stand, but she would not do so. He said he would have to use force to remove her, and she still refused to rise. Zorn held onto Linton’s arm, placed it behind her back, applied pressure to her wrist in what is known as a pain-compliance technique, and lifted her to her feet, the opinion said.

Linton sued the officer under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983, a federal law that allows individuals to sue governments for civil rights violations. She alleged Zorn violated her Fourth Amendment rights by using excessive force, stating that she experienced arm injuries and psychological disorders as a result of the encounter.

“After the incident, Ms. Linton suffered so acutely from her physical and psychological injuries that she was unable to seek care for herself,” Linton’s attorneys said in a brief.

At one point, her primary care physician put her arm in a cast and sling for four to five months to treat her arm and shoulder injuries, and she underwent physical therapy for the injuries. The state’s medical expert found that Zorn’s use of force “permanently injured Ms. Linton’s wrist and shoulder,” according to the brief.

A federal district court granted summary judgment in favor of Zorn, finding he was entitled to qualified immunity. That court found that at the time of the incident, it was not clearly established that lifting Linton while applying pressure on her wrist was a Fourth Amendment violation, according to the opinion.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed that decision, finding that the “gratuitous” use of the rear wristlock maneuver on a protester who was resisting passively constitutes excessive force. One circuit judge dissented, saying the case was “a routine arrest and removal,” the opinion said.

Zorn’s attorneys urged the Supreme Court to take up the case, arguing that the Second Circuit failed to comply with Supreme Court precedent by failing to identify a case in which an officer in similar circumstances was found to have violated the Fourth Amendment.

Instead, the circuit inferred there was a general rule against “gratuitous use of pain compliance,” based on its 2004 ruling in Amnesty America v. Town of West Hartford, the attorneys said in a brief.

In its new ruling, the Supreme Court reversed the judgment of the Second Circuit, finding that court was wrong to hold that the “gratuitous” use of a wristlock constituted excessive force.

Unlike the police in Amnesty America, Zorn “repeatedly warned Linton that he would have to use more force if she did not stand up.” Moreover, Amnesty America did not hold that using a wristlock violated the Fourth Amendment, and, “if anything, it implied the opposite,” the opinion said.

In her dissent, Sotomayor wrote that the court’s majority opinion “represents a resurgence and perpetuation” of its “‘one-sided approach to qualified immunity’ that ‘transforms the doctrine into an absolute shield for law enforcement officers, gutting the deterrent effect of the Fourth Amendment.’”

“The majority today gives officers license to inflict gratuitous pain on a nonviolent protester even where there is no threat to officer safety or any other reason to do so,” she said. “That is plainly inconsistent with the Fourth Amendment’s fundamental guarantee that officers may only use ‘the amount of force that is necessary’ under the circumstances.”

The Epoch Times reached out for comment to Linton’s attorneys and to the office of the Vermont attorney general, which represents Zorn. No replies were received by publication time.

This article by Matthew Vadum appeared March 24, 2026, in The Epoch Times.