UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

RICHARD MANRIQUEZ, No. 20-16917 Plaintiff-Appellee, D.C. No. v. 2:18-cv-02026- DWL JOEL CHRISTIAN ENSLEY; BRYAN LAWRENCE, Defendants-Appellants, OPINION

and TOWN OF SUPERIOR, a political subdivision; RICHARD H. MUELLER; ANTHONY DORAN, Defendants.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Arizona Dominic Lanza, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted November 10, 2021 Pasadena, California

Filed August 30, 2022 2 MANRIQUEZ V. ENSLEY

Before: Daniel P. Collins and Kenneth K. Lee, Circuit Judges, and Jill Otake, * District Judge.

Opinion by Judge Lee; Partial Concurrence and Partial Dissent by Judge Otake

SUMMARY **

Civil Rights

The panel reversed the district court’s denial of qualified immunity to police officers in an action brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging that the officers violated the Fourth Amendment when they expanded the scope of a search warrant without physically amending the warrant.

The police officers at first complied with the requirement that a warrant include a description of the “place to be searched,” by obtaining a warrant that listed a motel room suspected of being a hub for drug trafficking. The officers then decided to search the suspect’s home as well and asked the judge over the phone to expand the scope of the warrant to include the home. The judge agreed, but the officers did not physically amend the warrant.

The panel agreed with the district court that the officers violated the Fourth Amendment because the warrant was

* The Honorable Jill Otake, United States District Judge for the District of Hawaii, sitting by designation. ** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader. MANRIQUEZ V. ENSLEY 3 facially defective. While a judge had orally approved the search of the home, the text of the Fourth Amendment still requires the warrant to specify the place to be searched. But the panel held that the district court erred in denying the officers qualified immunity because it was not clearly established at the time that the search would violate the Fourth Amendment. An officer could have believed—based on the lack of direct case law at the time—that he or she could search the home because the court had orally approved the search, even if the officer failed to make that change on the warrant.

Concurring in part and dissenting in part, Judge Otake concurred that the officers violated the Fourth Amendment when they searched plaintiff’s home with a warrant that described a different location. Judge Otake respectfully dissented from the majority opinion because she believed that the Fourth Amendment’s particularity requirement was plain and clearly established the constitutional right; any reasonable officer would have understood that the failure to include the place to be searched on the warrant would be constitutionally fatal. 4 MANRIQUEZ V. ENSLEY

COUNSEL James M. Jellison (argued), Jellison Law Offices PLLC, Carefree, Arizona, for Defendants-Appellants. Martin A. Bihn (argued) and Donna M. McDaniel, Bihn & McDaniel PLC, Phoenix, Arizona, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

OPINION LEE, Circuit Judge:

The Fourth Amendment specifically requires a warrant to include a description of the “place to be searched.” The police officers here—at first—complied with that requirement, obtaining a warran