PANEL: Southwick, Graves (writing), Wilson.
DECIDED: August 6, 2026 (published). Reversed in part and dismissed in part; excessive-force and unlawful-seizure claims against the testing officer left for trial.
WHY IT MATTERS: A short menu of Fourth Amendment rules that decide when a force-and-search case survives immunity and reaches a jury.
On an early qualified-immunity appeal, the court does not decide who is telling the truth. It takes the plaintiff's account as given and asks one question: on those facts, was the law already clear. Under that lens, the claims against the officer who forced a drug test go to a jury.
The posture
A denial of qualified immunity can be appealed before trial, but the appeal is narrow. The facts are read in the plaintiff's favor, and the only question the court will answer is legal: even taking her version as true, does the officer win. That framing decides most of these cases long before the merits.
Causation is the jury's question
The officer did not fight over whether the force was hard. He argued the plaintiff's injury came from something else in a chaotic scene, not from his hands. The court refused to sort that out on appeal. Where several causes sit side by side, it held, "it is for the jury to decide whether a particular injury was caused by excessive force." That is the answer to every defendant who says the harm came from the intoxication, the prior condition, or the arrest, and not from the force.
The injury floor includes the mind
The court reaffirmed that a psychological injury can satisfy the more-than-trivial injury requirement, citing Lincoln v. Turner. The harm a jury may weigh is not limited to what shows on an X-ray.
The obvious case
Clearly established law usually needs a prior case close on its facts. Not always. On the plaintiff's version, with no threat and no resistance, the court found this an obvious one, where any use of force would have been excessive and no twin precedent is required. The edge cuts both ways. It is a narrow path that lives or dies on whether the plaintiff's account survives, which is exactly why reading the facts in her favor did the work.
Search and seizure of the body
Collecting a sample for a drug test is a Fourth Amendment search, and the physical compulsion used to take it is itself a seizure. See Torres v. Madrid and the Fifth Circuit's Club Retro. And an emergency that has already passed is not an exigency that excuses the intrusion. See Missouri v. McNeely. Once the reason for the intrusion is gone, so is the justification.
The lesson
This is a field-guide case, not a brief. An interlocutory immunity appeal is won or lost on one honest question: can the officer prevail taking every disputed fact against him. If the answer turns on whose story is right, or on which of several causes produced which injury, the appeal is not the place. That belongs to the jury.
Knighton v. Benton County, No. 25-60383 (5th Cir. Aug. 6, 2026) (published). Read the opinion. The excessive-force framework comes from Graham v. Connor (1989), on Oyez. The seizure and exigency points draw on Torres v. Madrid (2021) and Missouri v. McNeely (2013), both on Oyez, and the Fifth Circuit's Club Retro and Lincoln v. Turner.
