Thompson v. Clark
The Supreme Court ruled that a Brooklyn man whose criminal charges were quietly dropped can pursue a civil rights lawsuit against the police officers who arrested him — he does not have to prove his innocence was formally recognized, only that he was never convicted.
The decision resolves a longstanding split among federal courts and makes it easier to sue police for malicious prosecution anywhere in the country: a silent dismissal before trial is enough to open the courthouse door.
How it got here: The district court dismissed Thompson's Fourth Amendment malicious-prosecution claim under binding Second Circuit precedent; the Second Circuit affirmed; the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case to resolve a split among the federal courts of appeals.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Larry Thompson lived with his fiancée and their newborn baby in Brooklyn. In January 2014, his sister-in-law — who apparently suffered from a mental illness — called 911 claiming he was sexually abusing the infant. Police entered his apartment over his objection, handcuffed him after a scuffle, and arrested him. His baby was taken to the hospital and found to have only diaper rash, with no signs of abuse. Thompson was charged with obstructing governmental administration and resisting arrest, held for two days, and then released. The charges were dismissed before trial with no explanation from the prosecutor or judge.
The question before the Court
Can a person sue police for malicious prosecution under federal civil rights law when criminal charges were dismissed without any explanation or formal statement of innocence?
The Court's answer
Yes — the Court ruled that Thompson can pursue his civil rights lawsuit. To bring a Fourth Amendment malicious-prosecution claim under the federal civil rights statute (§ 1983), a person need only show that the criminal prosecution ended without a conviction. He does not also have to show that a court or prosecutor formally declared him innocent.
The Court reached this conclusion by looking at how American courts handled the malicious-prosecution tort in 1871, the year § 1983 was enacted. Back then, the overwhelming majority of courts required only that the prosecution end in the defendant's favor — meaning without a conviction — not that it end with an affirmative statement of innocence. Only one state (Rhode Island) demanded more, making it an outlier. The Court also noted that requiring a formal declaration of innocence would be arbitrary: whether a prosecutor explains a dismissal often has nothing to do with the strength of a civil rights claim, and a person whose weak case is dropped quietly before trial would be worse off than someone whose stronger case went to trial and ended in acquittal.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
People whose criminal cases are dropped without explanation — a common outcome when charges are weak — can now sue the officers responsible in federal court anywhere in the country. Previously, courts in several regions dismissed these lawsuits at the threshold because the prosecution had not formally declared the person innocent. That extra hurdle is gone.
What changes now
The case is sent back to the Second Circuit and/or the district court to decide the remaining questions the Supreme Court expressly left open: whether Thompson was actually "seized" as a result of the alleged malicious prosecution, whether he was charged without probable cause, and whether the officers are entitled to qualified immunity. Only if Thompson clears those hurdles will he be able to recover damages. The ruling also effectively ends the stricter favorable-termination rule previously applied in the Second, Third, Fourth, Sixth, and Tenth Circuits.
What this does not decide
The Court expressly reserved whether Thompson was seized, whether he was charged without probable cause, and whether the officers are entitled to qualified immunity — all of which are open on remand. The Court also did not decide whether a malicious-prosecution claim requires proof of malice (bad intent) in addition to the absence of probable cause.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent — Justice Alito
“Today, the Court creates a chimera of a constitutional tort by stitching together elements taken from two very different claims: a Fourth Amendment unreasonable seizure claim and a common-law malicious-prosecution claim.”Justice Alito's core objection that the majority's ruling has no coherent constitutional foundation.
Justice Alito argued that the Fourth Amendment has never been understood to house a malicious-prosecution claim, and the Court's hybrid creation has no constitutional grounding. He contended that a Fourth Amendment seizure claim and a malicious-prosecution claim share no common elements — they protect different interests, require different proof, and serve different purposes. He would have affirmed the dismissal and left Thompson to pursue available state-law remedies, noting that New York recognizes its own malicious-prosecution tort. He also warned the new claim will produce confusion about what elements it actually requires.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court's starting point was its standard method for deciding what elements a § 1983 constitutional tort claim must have: look to the most analogous common-law tort as it existed in 1871, when Congress enacted § 1983, so long as that approach is consistent with 'the values and purposes' of the constitutional right at issue (the test stated in Manuel v. Joliet, a 2017 SCOTUS case).
- The Court identified malicious prosecution as the most analogous common-law tort, because the central wrong in Thompson's Fourth Amendment claim — the wrongful initiation of charges without probable cause — mirrors the core of the malicious-prosecution tort. Most federal appeals courts had reached the same conclusion.
- One required element of the malicious-prosecution tort was a 'favorable termination' of the criminal prosecution. The dispute was whether 'favorable' means simply 'without a conviction' or whether it also requires an affirmative indication of innocence, such as an acquittal or a dismissal with a judicial finding that the evidence was insufficient.
- Surveying American court decisions and treatises from 1871, the Court found an overwhelming consensus: the favorable-termination element was satisfied as long as the prosecution ended without a conviction. Prosecutors could abandon a case, courts could dismiss without giving a reason, and either sufficed. Only Rhode Island required something more, and it did so 'with reluctance,' making it a clear outlier.
- The Court rejected reliance on the 1976 Second Restatement of Torts, which does require an affirmative indication of innocence, because the relevant legal baseline for interpreting § 1983 is 1871 — not what tort scholars wrote more than a century later.
- The Court further explained that requiring a formal declaration of innocence would be inconsistent with the Fourth Amendment's values and purposes: whether a prosecutor explains a dismissal is a fortuity that has nothing to do with the strength of the underlying civil rights claim. Officers remain protected by other requirements — the plaintiff must still prove the absence of probable cause, and officers can still invoke qualified immunity (a doctrine that shields officers from damages unless they violated clearly established law).
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Manuel v. Joliet (580 U.S. 357)
Reaffirmed as the source of the 'values and purposes' test used to shape § 1983 constitutional tort elements.