WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a Michigan police officer’s attempt to evade an excessive force claim arising from an incident that took place during a protest in the aftermath of the George Floyd killing.
The court turned away an appeal brought by Phillip Reinink, a police officer in Grand Rapids, who deployed tear gas during a May 30, 2020, disturbance just days after Floyd was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis.
Reinink says he thought his launcher was loaded with a form of tear gas powder that can be fired directly at someone, but it was instead a canister designed to be fired into the air. The canister hit Sean Hart and injured his shoulder.
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A police department investigation concluded that Reinink’s use of force was unreasonable, and he was suspended for two days.
The case concerned the contentious legal doctrine of qualified immunity, which often protects police officers from civil rights claims alleging they violated individuals’ constitutional rights.
While police officers frequently win on qualified immunity grounds, Reinink lost on that point, meaning the case against him can move forward. Ironically, in the aftermath of Floyd’s death, one of the issues protesters called for reform on was qualified immunity. That effort fizzled.
Two conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, noted they would have ruled in favor of Reinink.
In March 2023, a federal judge in Michigan dismissed Hart’s claim that Reinink had violated his rights under the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, which protects against unlawful searches and seizures.
But in May 2025, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Hart’s favor, saying that the incident involved a use of deadly force regardless of whether Reinink intended to deploy such force.
Qualified immunity did not apply because Reinink would have been on notice at the time that use of deadly force in such a situation was unlawful, the court found.
In a 2020 investigation, Reuters found that police officers were increasingly fending off excessive force claims thanks to Supreme Court rulings that strengthened qualified immunity.
