Washington, D.C.: The Supreme Court has declined to hear a race based policing case, leaving in place a lower court ruling that critics say forces officers to weigh a suspect’s race during street encounters. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented from the decision not to take up the case, warning that the underlying ruling creates a race-based policing standard that has no place in American law enforcement, according to court records.
The case, U.S. v. Donte J. Carter, involved a man whose firearm and theft convictions were vacated after the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled that police seized him before officers had reasonable suspicion to do so, according to court filings. Officers had recovered a pistol from Carter that prosecutors said had been stolen from a federal agent’s vehicle, according to the government’s filing in the case.
How the Lower Court Reasoned
In its opinion, the D.C. Court of Appeals found that Carter’s race was relevant to whether a reasonable person in his position would have felt free to walk away from officers during the encounter. The appeals court reasoned that Black Americans are, in its words, more skeptical of police and less likely to feel they can end an encounter on their own terms, court records show. Based on that reasoning, the court determined that the encounter constituted an unlawful seizure because the officers had not established reasonable suspicion before it occurred.
Dr. Travis Yates has pioneered a behavioral risk framework to help officers and leaders identify, assess, and articulate risk in rapidly evolving, uncertain situations. He calls the decision “extremely dangerous to any officer forced to make split-second decisions.” According to Yates, “behavior should be the only decision weighed by officers in making decisions,” and he calls it ironic that courts and activists went from banning race-related decisions to now demanding that officers take race into account when making decisions during citizen interactions.
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Considering the FBI reports that black males commit over half of all violent crimes in the United States while representing just 6% of the population, we wonder why law enforcement can’t use that as part of their decision-making?
It’s because it’s illegal…unless you are a criminal in Washington, D.C.
Why Alito and Thomas Dissented
Alito wrote the dissent on behalf of himself and Thomas, arguing that the lower court’s approach effectively requires officers to assess a person’s race in the field and to apply different legal standards depending on that assessment. Alito wrote that allowing someone to be treated differently based on statistics or studies about a racial group is dangerous, noting that such reasoning could just as easily cut against a person in a different case, even if it helped Carter in this one.
The dissent also raised a practical concern for law enforcement, asking what officers are supposed to do with other groups if courts require race-specific rules for Black Americans. Alito specifically questioned how the standard would apply to Latino suspects or other minority groups, according to the dissent. He cited prior Supreme Court precedent, including Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and Shaw v. Reno, to support the position that the Constitution is color-blind and almost never permits government actors to treat people differently based on race.
What the Justices Did Not Decide
Because the Supreme Court declined to take up the case, the D.C. Court of Appeals ruling remains in effect in that jurisdiction. The high court did not rule on the merits of the case, and it is unconfirmed how many other appellate courts have adopted similar reasoning in seizure cases. Carter had initially told officers he was not carrying a weapon when asked, according to court records, before officers asked him to adjust his clothing and observed what was later identified as a concealed firearm.
For street-level officers, the case lies at the intersection of constitutional law and real-world policing, where reasonable-suspicion determinations are already made in seconds under pressure. Adding a race-based variable to that calculation, as the dissent warns, creates exactly the kind of legal uncertainty that puts officers at risk of being second-guessed long after the encounter is over.
