# Barnes v. Felix A unanimous 2025 Supreme Court decision, written by [[Elena Kagan]], that **rejected the "moment-of-threat" rule** for police excessive-force claims. Courts must now weigh the **totality of the circumstances**, including events leading up to a shooting, not only the instant the officer fired. ## Facts On April 28, 2016, Houston-area traffic officer Roberto Felix Jr. stopped 24-year-old Ashtian Barnes over an unpaid toll on a rental car. When the car began to move forward, Felix stepped onto the door sill and fired two shots, killing Barnes. The Fifth Circuit had upheld the shooting by looking only at the final two seconds, when Felix was clinging to a moving car. ## Holding and What It Left Open - **Held (9–0):** the moment-of-threat rule is too narrow; the *[[Graham v. Connor]]* reasonableness inquiry considers the whole encounter. - **Left open:** whether an officer's own creation of the danger makes the force less reasonable — the [[Officer-Created Jeopardy]] question. The Court declined to reach it because the lower courts had not. - **Concurrence:** [[Brett Kavanaugh]], joined by Thomas, Alito and Barrett, emphasized the dangers of traffic stops and treated a driver's flight as a possible sign of serious crime. ## On Remand On September 18, 2025, the Fifth Circuit again ruled for Felix, finding the force reasonable under the totality test and relying heavily on the Kavanaugh concurrence. The family did not get a jury trial. > Status: stub — expand with oral-argument positions, circuit-split history, and post-*Barnes* lower-court treatment of officer-created jeopardy. ## See Also - [[Officer-Created Jeopardy]] · [[Graham v. Connor]] · [[Fourth Amendment]]