WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court rejected Grand Rapids police officer Phillip Reinink’s appeal seeking qualified immunity in an excessive force case stemming from a protest on May 30, 2020, following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The court’s decision allows Sean Hart’s civil rights lawsuit against Reinink to proceed.

On that night in Grand Rapids, Reinink deployed a tear gas launcher during a disturbance. He believed the device was loaded with a form of tear gas powder that could be fired directly at a person, but it was actually a canister designed to be fired into the air. The canister struck Hart in the shoulder, causing injury.

A Grand Rapids police department investigation concluded that Reinink’s use of force was unreasonable and suspended him for two days. The case later centered on the legal doctrine of qualified immunity, which often shields police officers from civil liability for constitutional violations.

In March 2023, a federal judge in Michigan dismissed Hart’s claim that Reinink violated his Fourth Amendment rights. In May 2025, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that ruling, determining that the incident involved deadly force regardless of Reinink’s intent. The appeals court held that qualified immunity did not apply because Reinink should have known that using deadly force in that situation was unlawful.

The Supreme Court declined to review the appeals court’s decision. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito said they would have ruled in favor of Reinink.

After George Floyd’s death in 2020, protesters called for reform or elimination of qualified immunity for law enforcement officers, though those legislative efforts did not succeed. A 2020 investigation found that police officers had increasingly succeeded in dismissing excessive force claims due to Supreme Court rulings that strengthened qualified immunity protections.