New York Times

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday issued decisions on a police shooting in San Francisco, tax credits for out-of-state income, felons’ possession of guns and prisoner lawsuits.

USE OF FORCE The court sided with two San Francisco police officers who in 2008 shot Teresa Sheehan, a mentally ill woman, when she resisted being moved from her private room in a group home to a mental health facility.

When the officers first entered Ms. Sheehan’s room, she told them to leave and grabbed a kitchen knife. After retreating and conferring, the officers forced open the door, blinded Ms. Sheehan with pepper spray and repeatedly shot her.

She survived and sued, and the federal appeals court in California allowed her case to go forward. The appeals court said the officers’ initial entry had been justified and did not violate the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. But, the court went on, “a jury could find that the officers acted unreasonably by forcing the second entry and provoking a near-fatal confrontation.”

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for a six-justice majority, said the officers were entitled to qualified immunity because there was no clearly established law barring their conduct.

The court did not resolve the main issue that it had been poised to address when it agreed to hear the case: whether the Americans With Disabilities Act applied to these kinds of confrontations. Justice Alito said San Francisco’s shift in its legal position as the case proceeded had made it impossible to address the question.

Justice Antonin Scalia, joined by Justice Elena Kagan, said he would not have decided either aspect of the case. “I would not reward such bait-and-switch tactics,” Justice Scalia said of San Francisco’s legal strategy.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer recused himself from the case, City and County of San Francisco v. Sheehan, No. 13-1412, presumably because his brother, Judge Charles R. Breyer, was the trial judge.

STATE TAXES By a 5-to-4 vote, the court ruled that Maryland had violated the Constitution by collecting taxes from its residents for income earned in other states without granting them a credit for taxes paid to those states. Most states offer such credits to their residents.

“Maryland’s tax scheme is inherently discriminatory and operates as a tariff,” Justice Alito wrote for the majority in the case, Maryland v. Wynne, No. 13-485. “Maryland’s scheme creates an incentive for taxpayers to opt for intrastate rather than interstate activity.”

Justice Alito said the state’s approach violated an aspect of the Constitution’s commerce clause, which gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce and has been held by the court implicitly to bar some kinds of state taxes.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Breyer, Anthony M. Kennedy and Sonia Sotomayor joined the majority opinion.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the main dissent. “As I see it,” she wrote, “nothing in the Constitution or in prior decisions of this court dictates that one of two states, the domiciliary state or the source state, must recede simply because both have lawful tax regimes reaching the same income.”

Justices Scalia and Kagan joined Justice Ginsburg’s dissent.

Justices Scalia and Clarence Thomas filed separate dissents taking issue with the court’s interpretation of the commerce clause. Justice Scalia called it “a judicial fraud.”

GUN POSSESSION In a unanimous decision in Henderson v. United States, No. 13-1487, the court ruled that gun owners who may no longer lawfully possess firearms after felony convictions can sometimes direct what is to be done with their guns.

The case concerned Tony Henderson, a Border Patrol agent who pleaded guilty to a felony charge of distributing marijuana and surrendered the guns he owned. After his release from prison, Mr. Henderson, who was no longer allowed by federal law to possess the guns because he was a felon, asked a judge to transfer them to a friend or to his wife.

The judge refused, and an appeals court agreed, saying such transfers are never permissible. Justice Kagan, writing for the court, rejected such a categorical approach.

To be sure, she said, the law “prevents a court from ordering the sale or other transfer of a felon’s guns to someone willing to give the felon access to them or to accede to the felon’s instructions about their future use.” But the appeals court’s approach, she said, was too rigid in barring Mr. Henderson from requesting other kinds of transfers.

“He could not, for example, place those guns in a secure trust for distribution to his children after his death,” Justice Kagan wrote of the appeals court’s approach. “He could not sell them to someone halfway around the world. He could not even donate them to a law enforcement agency.”

The bottom line, she said, is that “a court facing a motion like Henderson’s may approve the transfer of guns consistently with” the law “if, but only if, that disposition prevents the felon from later exercising control over those weapons, so that he could either use them or tell someone else how to do so.”

PRISONERS’ LAWSUITS In a second unanimous decision, the court tightened the rules for allowing federal prisoners to file lawsuits without paying filing fees.

People too poor to pay such fees are usually entitled to waivers. But a federal “three strikes” law says waivers are not available if three or more of a prisoner’s cases have been dismissed as frivolous, malicious or legally inadequate.

The case, Coleman v. Tollefson, No. 13-1333, concerned a federal prisoner in Michigan, Andre Lee Coleman, who had sought waivers in four suits notwithstanding three earlier dismissals. He argued that he was entitled to waivers while an appeal of the third dismissal was pending.

Justice Breyer, writing for the court, rejected the argument.

“To refuse to count a prior dismissal because of a pending appeal would produce a leaky filter,” he wrote. “Appeals take time. During that time, a prisoner could file many lawsuits, including additional lawsuits that are frivolous, malicious, or fail to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. Indeed, Coleman filed these four cases after he suffered his third qualifying dismissal, in October 2009, and before the affirmance of that order, in March 2011.”