This morning, the Supreme Court denied certiorari in a case called Salazar-Limon v. City of Houston, a civil rights lawsuit in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit affirmed qualified immunity for a police officer who shot an unarmed man, because the man was allegedly reaching for his waistband. (Why he would be reaching for his waistband, given that he was unarmed, is a mystery.)

Though the Supreme Court does not normally explain its denials of certiorari, the denial prompted a couple of opinions. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, dissented. Sotomayor argued that the district court had wrongly granted summary judgment and foreclosed a trial, “disregarding basic principles of summary judgment,” which should have made “easy work” of the case.

But she also remarked on a broader phenomenon in the court’s qualified immunity docket:

Read more at The Volokh Conspiracy