Distracted Police Driving Alone Does Not Establish a Substantive Due-Process Violation

A. Appellate Jurisdiction and the Court’s Responsibility to Decide Immunity

The estate argued that appellate jurisdiction was lacking because the district court had not substantively resolved qualified immunity. The Seventh Circuit rejected that argument: deferring the defense does not eliminate an officer’s right to obtain appellate review of the controlling legal questions.

Precedents governing immediate review

• Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511 (1985). This decision supplies the basic rule permitting immediate appeal from a denial of qualified immunity under the collateral-order doctrine. Although denials of summary judgment ordinarily are not final, appealable decisions, qualified immunity would lose much of its value if the official first had to undergo trial.

• Plumhoff v. Rickard, 572 U.S. 765 (2014). The court relied on this case to explain that qualified immunity is immunity from suit, not merely a defense against an eventual damages award. Review after final judgment cannot restore the protection against standing trial that has already been lost.

• Johnson v. Jones, 515 U.S. 304 (1995). This decision limits interlocutory review where an official seeks to contest factual determinations about what happened. It did not bar Streicher’s appeal because he accepted the relevant facts and argued that those facts, viewed favorably to the estate, did not defeat immunity.

• McGee v. Parsano, 55 F.4th 563 (7th Cir. 2022). This precedent describes the factual-dispute exception as narrow and distinguishes questions about historical events from legal questions concerning immunity. It also supplied the standard of de novo review, requiring the appellate court to assess the legal issues independently while construing the evidence in the estate’s favor.

• Blackmon v. Jones, 132 F.4th 522 (7th Cir. 2025). The opinion invoked this case for the proposition that an immunity appeal cannot be used to contest facts, but may proceed on the assumption that all factual matters are resolved favorably to the plaintiff. Streicher’s appeal followed that permissible approach.

• Watts v. Jones, 177 F.4th 820 (7th Cir. 2026). This case confirms that an official may immediately present arguments about the state of the law, particularly whether the asserted constitutional rule was clearly established. The district court’s decision to sidestep that issue did not defeat appellate jurisdiction.

• Allman v. Smith, 790 F.3d 762 (7th Cir. 2015). This precedent explains why Milwaukee County could not participate as an appellant asserting qualified immunity: the defense belongs to public officials, not the agencies employing them. The county’s withdrawal did not itself resolve any separate claim against it.

The procedural lesson is not that juries never resolve facts relevant to immunity. They may need to resolve genuinely disputed historical facts. Rather, a court must decide whether the plaintiff-favorable factual account establishes a constitutional violation and whether existing law clearly prohibited the conduct. Here, an agreed factual record left no basis for postponing those legal determinations.

B. The Constitutional Threshold: More Than Dangerous or Unlawful Driving

The substantive component of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause protects against sufficiently egregious abuses of governmental power. It does not convert every injury caused by a government employee into a constitutional deprivation.

County of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833 (1998)

This Supreme Court decision provides the opinion’s foundational framework. It concerned a high-speed police pursuit that ended in a crash killing a motorcycle passenger. The Court required conduct that “shocks the conscience” and emphasized that the Fourteenth Amendment is not a general source of federal tort law.

The decision identifies a spectrum of culpability:

• Negligently inflicted harm falls below the constitutional threshold.
• Conduct intended to cause injury without a legitimate governmental justification is especially likely to meet that threshold.
• Intermediate culpability, including deliberate indifference, requires context-sensitive evaluation.

For a high-speed pursuit aimed at apprehending a fleeing suspect, the Supreme Court required a purpose to cause harm unrelated to the legitimate object of arrest. The Seventh Circuit did not mechanically impose that pursuit-specific rule on Streicher’s ordinary driving. Instead, it applied the broader distinction between negligence and conscience-shocking misconduct, informed by circuit precedent addressing nonemergency collisions.

Hill v. Shobe, 93 F.3d 418 (7th Cir. 1996)

This case involved an on-duty officer who, without an emergency, drove well above the speed limit after midnight with his headlights off and without emergency lights or a siren. He ran a red light and caused a fatal collision. Despite the dangerous conduct, the court rejected the substantive due-process claim.

The governing distinction was between an officer who should have known of a danger and one who actually knew of impending harm and consciously refused to prevent it. Awareness of a recognizable but generic risk to the public was insufficient. Although this decision preceded the Supreme Court’s framework, the panel regarded its analysis as consistent with that later authority.

Its influence here was substantial: even serious traffic violations do not necessarily show the subjective awareness required for constitutional liability.

Bublitz v. Cottey, 327 F.3d 485 (7th Cir. 2003)

An officer assisting a pursuit deployed a tire-deflation device. The fleeing vehicle struck it and then collided with another vehicle, killing two occupants. Applying the high-speed-pursuit framework, the court affirmed summary judgment for the officer and emphasized the need for substantial culpability and a purpose to cause harm in circumstances analogous to such pursuits.

This decision reinforced the proposition that a fatal outcome, even one connected to an officer’s affirmative intervention, does not itself establish conscience-shocking misconduct. The opinion treated the officer’s conduct there as, at most, negligent.

Flores v. City of South Bend, 997 F.3d 725 (7th Cir. 2021)

This decision marks the contrasting side of the constitutional boundary. An officer unnecessarily responding to a routine traffic stop drove through a residential neighborhood at speeds reaching 98 miles per hour in a 30-mile-per-hour zone. He used his lights or siren only intermittently, saw a red light, and nevertheless entered an intersection despite an obstructed view of cross traffic, causing a fatal collision.

The court held that those allegations plausibly supported a substantive due-process claim. The decisive feature was the officer’s intentional decision to proceed “blind through an intersection” despite the red light and known inability to see approaching traffic.

The distinction from Streicher’s conduct was therefore not merely speed. The allegations supported an inference of conscious confrontation with a known, immediate danger. Streicher, by contrast, missed the signal because he was looking away. The decision also arose at the pleading stage: it recognized a plausible claim rather than finally establishing constitutional liability.

Lisby v. Henderson, 74 F.4th 470 (7th Cir. 2023)

An officer driving to work exceeded the speed limit, crossed prohibited lane markings, and partially entered a highway shoulder, striking and killing a woman and her unborn child. The court nevertheless rejected the constitutional claim.

That decision synthesized the earlier circuit cases: awareness that dangerous driving could have fatal consequences does not establish actual knowledge of imminent harm. The complaint did not support the necessary inference that the officer consciously refused to prevent an impending injury.

The panel considered Streicher’s conduct less egregious than conduct already held insufficient in this case and in Hill v. Shobe. This comparison reinforced its conclusion that the estate’s evidence fell below the constitutional threshold.

Application to Streicher

The estate’s strongest fact was the length of Streicher’s inattention: 15.5 seconds over approximately 500 feet. That interval demonstrated a serious failure to monitor the road. It did not, without more, establish that he knew a collision or comparable harm was imminent and deliberately allowed it to occur.

The distinction is between deliberately looking away and deliberately disregarding a known impending injury. The former does not automatically prove the latter. Likewise, having time to act carefully does not itself establish the subjective awareness required for deliberate indifference.

The court did not require direct testimony admitting such awareness; circumstantial evidence can support an inference of deliberate indifference, as the comparison with Flores v. City of South Bend demonstrates. It held that this particular record did not reasonably support that inference.

C. Qualified Immunity as an Independent Ground for Judgment

Even assuming the constitutional claim could reach a jury, the estate still had to show that the unlawfulness of Streicher’s conduct was clearly established on January 25, 2020. The court concluded that it had not done so.

The governing immunity precedents

• Zorn v. Linton, 607 U.S. 568 (2026) (per curiam). The opinion cited this decision for the general protection afforded officials unless they violate clearly established law. A right must be sufficiently clear that every reasonable official would understand the conduct to violate it; existing precedent must place the constitutional issue beyond debate.

• District of Columbia v. Wesby, 583 U.S. 48 (2018). This decision supplies the two-part inquiry—violation of a federal right and clearly established unlawfulness—and emphasizes factual specificity. General constitutional propositions are not enough; precedent must establish a sufficiently particular rule applicable to the circumstances confronting the officer.

• Davis v. City of Elgin, 180 F.4th 1023 (7th Cir. 2026). The panel used this case to restate that both elements must be satisfied before the immunity shield is pierced. Showing a possible constitutional violation alone therefore would not have saved the estate’s claim.

• Mabes v. Thompson, 136 F.4th 697 (7th Cir. 2025). Although qualified immunity is an affirmative defense, this decision places on the plaintiff, once immunity is asserted at summary judgment, the burden of demonstrating both the violation and its clearly established character.

• Russell v. Comstock, 167 F.4th 984 (7th Cir. 2026). This case reinforces the burden allocation by describing qualified immunity as the baseline that the plaintiff must overcome.

• Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223 (2009), and Camreta v. Greene, 563 U.S. 692 (2011). These decisions permit courts to resolve qualified immunity on the clearly established-law requirement without first deciding the constitutional merits. The panel addressed both here, but explained that immunity would independently require judgment even if the merits were assumed in the estate’s favor.

The relevant rule could not be framed simply as a right to be free from conscience-shocking official conduct. That description was too general to establish that distracted driving at the speed limit, under these circumstances, violated substantive due process.

Nor did the court require a previous case with literally identical facts. Its conclusion rested on the absence of sufficiently analogous authority and the inapplicability of the narrow obvious-violation exception.

D. Why the Out-of-Circuit Decisions Did Not Establish the Claimed Right

Browder v. City of Albuquerque, 787 F.3d 1076 (10th Cir. 2015)

An officer finishing his shift drove his cruiser at an average of approximately 66 miles per hour through numerous city intersections. Approaching another intersection, he saw the signal turn red but accelerated into it, causing a collision that killed one person and seriously injured another.

The Tenth Circuit regarded this as a conscious abuse of governmental power for personal pleasure, displaying contempt for others’ lives. The Seventh Circuit distinguished that intentional acceleration through a known red light from Streicher’s failure to perceive the signal. Both involved unlawful driving, but the evidence of subjective awareness was materially different.

Sauers v. Borough of Nesquehoning, 905 F.3d 711 (3d Cir. 2018)

An officer pursued a minor traffic offender at speeds exceeding 100 miles per hour, lost control on a curve, crossed the center line, and caused a fatal collision. The Third Circuit held that the allegations plausibly established a substantive due-process claim under a state-created danger theory.

Importantly, it also granted qualified immunity because the relevant constitutional rule was not clearly established when the officer acted. The case therefore illustrates the distinction between sufficiently alleging a constitutional violation and establishing an entitlement to damages. Its extreme pursuit-related recklessness did not supply a particularized rule governing Streicher’s distracted driving.

Dean ex rel. Harkness v. McKinney, 976 F.3d 407 (4th Cir. 2020)

An officer continued driving at approximately 83 miles per hour on a winding, unlit road after an emergency request had been downgraded. Without emergency lights or a siren, he lost control and struck an approaching vehicle nearly head-on. The Fourth Circuit emphasized that he had more than two minutes to deliberate after learning that no emergency remained.

The decision differed factually because it concerned continued, knowingly reckless high-speed driving. It also postdated the January 2020 collision and therefore could not have provided Streicher with advance constitutional notice.

Timing matters throughout the analysis. The court’s use of later decisions to explain doctrine should not be confused with their capacity to establish law before the collision. Flores v. City of South Bend and Lisby v. Henderson also postdated Streicher’s conduct; they helped articulate and compare the governing culpability standard, but could not themselves supply pre-accident notice.

E. The “Obvious Case” Exception Did Not Apply

The estate alternatively argued that Streicher’s conduct was so plainly unconstitutional that closely analogous precedent was unnecessary.

Brosseau v. Haugen, 543 U.S. 194 (2004) (per curiam), as discussed through District of Columbia v. Wesby, recognizes the possibility of a rare obvious case in which existing general principles establish unlawfulness despite the absence of closely comparable facts.

Leiser v. Kloth, 933 F.3d 696 (7th Cir. 2019), describes the exception as applying to conduct so outrageous that no reasonable officer would have believed it lawful.

The panel concluded that Streicher’s distracted driving did not meet that demanding constitutional standard. Its obvious danger—and its criminal consequences under state law—did not make it an obvious violation of substantive due process. The distinction matters because illegality under traffic or criminal law does not automatically establish federal constitutional illegality.