A retaliatory arrest or retaliatory prosecution is an arrest or prosecution undertaken in retaliation for a person's exercise of their civil rights. It is a form of prosecutorial misconduct.
In Hartman v. Moore in 2006, the United States Supreme Court ruled that for a prosecution to be found retaliatory, it must have been brought without probable cause.[1] [2]
In the 2018 case of Lozman v. City of Riviera Beach, Riviera Beach, Florida argued that the logic of Hartman extended to retaliatory arrest. The Supreme Court issued a narrow ruling that plaintiff Fane Lozman was able to bring the claim despite there having been probable cause for his arrest.[3] A year later, they answered the broader question, holding in Nieves v. Bartlett that probable cause defeats a claim of retaliatory arrest unless the plaintiff can show that others have typically not been arrested for similar conduct.[4] [5]