Hartman v. Moore
The Court ruled that a person suing government officials for allegedly pushing a prosecutor to bring retaliatory criminal charges over protected speech must also plead and prove that the underlying charges lacked probable cause.
The decision makes it harder to win these retaliation lawsuits against investigators and other non-prosecuting officials, because plaintiffs now carry an extra burden connecting the officials' motives to the prosecutor's independent decision to charge.
“Because evidence of an inspector’s animus does not necessarily show that the inspector induced the prosecutor to act when he would not have pressed charges otherwise”
Explaining why proof of an official's bad motive alone doesn't establish causation.
How it got here: After the D.C. Circuit reinstated Moore's retaliatory-prosecution claim and denied the inspectors qualified immunity, the inspectors asked the Supreme Court to resolve a circuit split.
The Case in Depth
What happened
William Moore ran a company that made mail-scanning equipment and lobbied hard against the Postal Service's preferred technology. After losing a major equipment contract, Moore and his company were investigated and criminally charged by federal prosecutors, urged on by postal inspectors, but a judge acquitted them for lack of evidence. Moore then sued the inspectors, claiming they had engineered the prosecution to punish his lobbying.
The question before the Court
If someone claims postal inspectors talked a prosecutor into charging them just to punish their lobbying speech, must they also prove the prosecutor lacked probable cause?
The Court's answer
Yes — the Court ruled that a plaintiff suing officials who allegedly pushed a prosecutor to bring retaliatory criminal charges must plead and prove that the charges lacked probable cause. Because the prosecutor (who actually decided to charge) is immune from suit, the real defendant is someone else who merely influenced that decision, and courts presume prosecutors act on legitimate grounds.
Requiring proof of no probable cause helps bridge the gap between an official's bad motive and the prosecutor's independent choice to bring charges, and rebuts that presumption of regularity. The Court found this requirement adds little cost since probable cause evidence is likely to come up in nearly every such case anyway.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
People who believe they were criminally charged because they angered government officials with their speech will now need concrete evidence that the charges were legally baseless, not just evidence of bad motive. This makes lawsuits against investigators, inspectors, and other officials who influence prosecutors — but don't prosecute themselves — significantly harder to win.
What changes now
The case goes back to the lower courts, where Moore will now have to plead and prove that the postal inspectors lacked probable cause for the underlying criminal charges, in addition to showing retaliatory motive. This is a final merits ruling on the legal standard, not a temporary order, though it does not resolve whether Moore can actually meet that standard on the existing record.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether a purely retaliatory investigation (without a resulting prosecution) can itself be a constitutional violation, and it left open whether a direct admission by a prosecutor of retaliatory purpose might excuse the no-probable-cause requirement.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent — Justice Ginsburg
“So long as the retaliators present evidence barely sufficient to establish probable cause and persuade a prosecutor to act on their thin information, they could accomplish their mission cost free.”Warning that the majority's rule lets retaliating officials escape accountability too easily.
Justice Ginsburg argued that because the prosecutor was no longer a defendant, the burden should stay on the retaliating officials to show the prosecution would have happened anyway, rather than forcing the plaintiff to prove an absence of probable cause. She warned the majority's rule lets officials with retaliatory motives escape liability so long as they can scrape together barely enough evidence for probable cause, leaving victims uncompensated for the costs and reputational harm of a baseless prosecution.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court recognized that retaliation claims generally require showing that the retaliatory motive was the but-for cause -- meaning the harm would not have happened without it -- of the official action, which normally can be shown just through evidence of motive plus the adverse action itself.
- The Court explained that prosecution cases differ because evidence about whether probable cause existed for the criminal charge is uniquely powerful circumstantial evidence of whether retaliation actually drove the prosecution, unlike in ordinary retaliation cases.
- The Court identified a second complication: because prosecutors have absolute immunity and can't be sued, the actual defendant is a different official (like an inspector) who merely influenced the prosecutor, so the causal chain runs from that official's motive to a separate person's independent decision to charge.
- The Court reasoned that courts must presume prosecutors act with legitimate reasons -- the presumption of regularity -- and that an inspector's bad motive alone doesn't show the inspector actually induced a prosecution that otherwise wouldn't have happened.
- The Court concluded that requiring proof of an absence of probable cause is the best way to bridge this causal gap and rebut the presumption of regularity, because it is highly probative, likely to come up in nearly every such case anyway, and thus adds little extra cost to litigation.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Mt. Healthy City Bd. of Ed. v. Doyle (429 U. S. 274)
The Court relies on this case's but-for causation framework as the baseline rule for ordinary retaliation claims.