E. Sanchez v. William Bratton

MEMORANDUM

Plaintiffs, the parents, grandmother and aunt of then-probationer Oscar Sanchez (“Oscar”), appeal the district court’s grant, on summary judgment, of qualified immunity to law enforcement defendants on the illegal search branch of their claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 . We affirm.

On the threshold constitutional question, we reject plaintiffs’ invitation to depart from binding Circuit law that has consistently recognized no constitutional difference between probation and parole for purposes of the Fourth Amendment. Sanchez v. Canales, 574 F.3d 1169 , 1174 n. 3 (9th Cir.2009); Motley v. Parks, 432 F.3d 1072 , 1083 n. 9 (9th Cir.2005) (en banc). We have already concluded, in the earlier interlocutory appeal in this case, that both parole and probation conditions “are categorically sufficient to justify the invasion of privacy entailed by a home search,” Sanchez, 574 F.3d at 1174 , and have likewise already determined, for qualified immunity purposes, that United States v. Knights, 534 U.S. 112 , 122 S.Ct. 587 , 151 L.Ed.2d 497 (2001) (on which plaintiffs rely here), cannot be read as having clearly established a requirement of individualized suspicion for warrantless…