Brooks

Opinion by Judge HALL; Dissent by Judge BERZON.

Sergeant Steven Daman, Officer Juan Ornelas, and Officer Donald Jones (collectively “the Officers”) appeal the district court’s denial of the Officers’ motion for summary judgment on Malaika Brooks’s § 1983 and state law claims. Brooks had sued the City of Seattle, the Seattle Police Department (“SPD”) and its chief, as well as the Officers, based on the Officers’ alleged excessive force when they tased her three times to effect her arrest. The district court denied the Officers’ motion for summary judgment, 1 finding that they were not entitled to qualified immunity for their actions. The Officers challenge that denial. This court has jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291 . We reverse.

I.

On November 23, 2004, SPD Officer Juan Ornelas stopped Brooks for speeding in a school zone. 2 The situation deteriorated rather quickly. Brooks claimed she had not been speeding, took her driver’s license out of Officer Ornelas’s ticket book and only reluctantly gave it back, and then repeatedly refused to sign a Notice of Infraction (“Notice”) regarding her speeding violation. 3 When SPD Officer Jones arrived at the scene, Officer Ornelas…

dissenting:

I dissent.

Here is what happened to Malaika Brooks, a pregnant mother, as she was driving her son to school one day: Two, soon three, police officers surrounded her. The officers thought she was speeding in a *1032 school zone; she says she was not. Brooks provided her identification when asked, so there was no doubt who she was or where to find her. The officers wrote her a ticket but she refused to sign it. Refusing to sign a speeding ticket was at the time a nonarrestable misdemeanor; now, in Washington, it is not even that. 1 Brooks had no weapons and had not harmed or threatened to harm a soul. Although she had told the officers she was seven months pregnant, they proceeded to use a Taser on her, not once but three times, causing her to scream with pain and leaving burn marks and permanent scars.

I fail utterly to comprehend how my colleagues are able to conclude that it was objectively reasonable to use any force against Brooks, let alone three activations of a Taser, in response to such a trivial offense. Obviously, the sensible reaction to her refusal to acknowledge the ticket in writing would have been to so note on the ticket and send her on her way.…