Keisha Stokes Huff is Associate Director of Legal Management at the Southern Poverty Law Center. Court summary in Jennings vs. Smith.
In May 2022, Alabama pastor Michael Jennings was out watering his neighbor’s garden as a courtesy when he was accosted by a police officer. They had a short conversation, and Jennings explained who he was and why he was there. Officers arrested him after he refused to produce identification.
Last month, the Alabama Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case stemming from the arrest, which raises important questions about police officers’ authority to request documents from people and poses unique challenges to the delicate balance of power between state and federal courts interpreting state law.
The case is Jennings vs. Smith, The issue arrived at the Alabama high court as a certified question, an inquiry from a federal court questioning the interpretation of state law, and it arrived there in a highly unusual way. In 2024, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court’s ruling that the officer was immune from a wrongful arrest lawsuit because Jennings had no legal obligation to provide identification. The decision would normally be binding upon remand to a federal trial court, but after the Eleventh Circuit’s decision, the trial court asked the Alabama Supreme Court for review.
Arrested while watering flowers
The only basis on which police approached Jennings was a call from a woman who said she had seen a black man near her white family’s home while they were on vacation. Upon arrival, the first officer on scene observed Jennings holding a water hose and asked him what he was doing. “I’m going to water the flowers,” Jennings said. After further conversation, Mr. Jennings told the officers that he was “Pastor Jennings,” that he lived across the street, and that he was guarding the neighbors’ homes in their absence. When asked for identification, Jennings refused, saying he had done nothing wrong.
Additional officers arrived and eventually arrested Jennings for refusing to produce identification and charged him with obstructing government operations, in violation of an Alabama law that criminalizes interference “by intimidation, physical violence, interference, or other independent unlawful act.” The District Court dismissed the charges with prejudice in July 2022.
In September of that year, Jennings filed a lawsuit in federal court against the officers and the city of Childersburg, Alabama, alleging unlawful retaliatory arrest. In December 2023, a federal trial court found that the officers and the city were entitled to immunity, and Jennings appealed.
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the trial court, citing the statute and noting that Jennings did not interfere with the officers through threats, physical violence or obstruction. Therefore, probable cause under the statute could exist only if Jennings committed an “independent tort.”
The officer and the city argued to the appellate court that Jennings independently committed misconduct by not disclosing his identity. They rely on another statute that allows police officers to stop a person and ask for three things if they “reasonably suspect” that the person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime: “name, address, and description of actions.”
In analyzing whether Jennings independently committed a tort, the Eleventh Circuit began by noting that “under the Fourth Amendment, police are free to ask questions and citizens are free to ignore questions.” Therefore, any legal obligation to answer police questions must arise under state law.
Turning to the statute in question, the 11th Circuit said the plain text gives police the power to request only names, addresses, and descriptions of behavior, not driver’s licenses. The court found that because the officers never asked Mr. Jennings for his name or address, information that the law authorizes him to require, there was no probable cause to arrest him for violating the law. And the information Mr. Jennings shared with officers was closely tracked for disclosures that might be required under the law, including his name, where he lived and what he did.
After remand to the trial court, the defendants moved to certify the controlling question to the Alabama Supreme Court. The trial court granted the motion in May 2025, finding the question of whether police officers are permitted under state law to request physical identification in such circumstances.
Is textualism still sacrosanct in Alabama?
The Alabama Supreme Court typically applies a textualist approach to questions of statutory interpretation. During oral argument, plaintiffs’ attorneys emphasized that Mr. Jennings had provided all the information that officers were allowed to request under the plain language of the statute before he was asked for identification. Therefore, Jennings was not arrested because the officer did not have the necessary information, but because Jennings did not produce physical identification.
Jennings’ attorney emphasized to the judge that his client’s interpretation requires Alabamians to carry identification everywhere to avoid arrest.
Officials and the city offered interpretations that did not strictly follow the plain text of the statute. Rather, the defendants argued that because a driver’s license contains some of the information that a police officer can request under the statute, “a law enforcement officer can request information (name and address) in any form, including a driver’s license.” They also argued that although the law is silent on any form of physical identification, an interpretation that would allow officers to request a driver’s license would best serve the purpose of the law (identifying suspects).
During the defendants’ arguments, Chief Justice Sarah Stewart asked what kind of identification the officer might ask for under their proposed interpretation, saying, “Could he have asked for a passport? And if he didn’t, would he be arrested for obstruction of justice?” The defendant’s lawyer responded that the officer could have asked for his passport, but suggested that a reasonable officer would not have done so.
The incident has attracted the attention of national groups across the political spectrum. The American Civil Liberties Union, the Cato Institute, the Woods Foundation, and the Southern Poverty Law Center, where I work, filed court briefs in support of Jennings. The brief argues that interpreting the law to include an “implicit and unspecified physical identification requirement” would render it unconstitutionally vague in violation of due process and broader than its title in violation of the state constitution’s provision that “each law must be clearly expressed in its title.” State law enforcement agencies filed briefs in support of the defendants.
Questionable certified questions
At least one judge appeared exasperated by the unusual procedural nature of the case. Justice Brady Mendheim, the sole dissent in the court’s agreement with the certification question, said the court asked “certification questions several times a year,” but never in the context of a lower federal court seeking a “contrary ruling” from a federal appeals court decision.
In fact, two basic jurisprudential principles should obviate the need for the Alabama Supreme Court to intervene in this case. First, under case law principles, “district courts and courts of appeals are generally bound by prior appellate decisions in the same case,” the Eleventh Circuit wrote.
Separately, the Eleventh Circuit’s precedential rules provide that if the circuit “decides an issue in a published decision, that decision is binding on all future panels.” These prior circuit court decisions are binding on district courts within the circuit as well. Although the circuit court’s decision in this case has not been published and is not precedent under this rule, the court had already reached the same conclusion in a previously published case. Found in Edger vs. McCabe The law states that “no one is required to present an “identification card” or “driver’s license.”
The trial court ignored these principles in certifying the question to the Alabama Supreme Court. Rather than deferring the Eleventh Circuit’s decision in the case or litigation at hand. edgerthe trial court cited the panel’s subsequent unpublished decision. Mets vs. Bridges as a different interpretation of state law warranting intervention by the Alabama Supreme Court. court of female The court ruled that under the law, police officers had probable cause to arrest a man who refused to leave a government building and then failed to produce identification.
Mendheim expressed some skepticism about the trial court’s approach during oral argument, noting that accepting certification questions is a matter of discretion and that the “greater concern” is respecting the federal courts and allowing them to do their jobs. He added that the Eleventh Circuit did not think a certifying inquiry was necessary, and the trial court also thought it was unnecessary until it was dismissed.
This case has the potential to signal major substantive and procedural changes in the administration of justice in Alabama. Can a civilian who fails to produce identification when asked for by a police officer be arrested? Will textualism continue to be the prevailing interpretive approach in Alabama? And will Alabama’s federal trial courts be bound by superior court decisions, or should they appeal to the Alabama Supreme Court when they disagree with the Eleventh Circuit on issues of state law? We await answers from the Alabama Supreme Court, expected later this year.
Recommended Citation: Keisha Stokes-Hough, Black pastor arrested for refusing to show ID, Alabama Supreme Court rulesSᴛᴀᴛᴇ Cᴏᴜʀᴛ Rᴇᴘᴏʀᴛ (February 27, 2026), https://statecourtreport.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/arrest-black-pastor-refusing-show-id-reaches-alabama-supreme-court
