Hernandez v. Mesa

Hernandez v. Mesa was a pair of United States Supreme Court cases (582 U.S. 548 (2017) and 589 U.S. 93 (2020)) in which the court held that the precedent established under the 1971 Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents decision did not extend to claims based on cross-border shootings.

The case centered on the 2010 shooting of a Mexican teenager on the Mexican side of the Mexico–United States border by a U.S. Border Patrol agent who was standing on the U.S. side of the border at the time he fired his weapon. The case, heard through the Fifth Circuit, had reached the Supreme Court twice, first in 2017 and again in 2019. Both times, the Fifth Circuit ruled that the agent could not be sued for his actions. At the time of the 2017 hearing, the Supreme Court had just ruled in Ziglar v. Abbasi, another case involving Bivens which introduced special considerations for these types of cases; and the Supreme Court reversed the Fifth Circuit's decision in Hernandez and remanded the case to be reheard on the basis of Ziglar. On its appeal in 2019, the Court decided the situation was an international one that required a diplomatic solution to be set by Congress rather than a civil one determined by the courts, and upheld the Fifth Circuit's ruling.