Arrest of Black Pastor for Refusing to Show ID Reaches Alabama Supreme Court 

Keisha Stokes-Hough is a deputy director of legal management at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which filed an amicus brief in Jennings v. Smith.

Alabama pastor Michael Jennings was watering his neighbors’ garden as a favor while they were out of town in May 2022 when he was approached by police officers. They had a brief exchange during which Jennings explained who he was and why he was there. The officers arrested him after he refused to provide physical identification.

Last month, the Alabama Supreme Court heard oral argument in a case arising from that arrest that raises important questions about police officers’ authority to demand people’s papers — and also poses a unique challenge to the delicate balance of authority among state and federal courts interpreting state law.

The case, Jennings v. Smith, reached the Alabama high court as a certified question — an inquiry from a federal court asking how to interpret a state law — but it arrived there in a highly unusual way. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in 2024 reversed a lower court ruling that the police officers were not immune from suit for unlawful arrest because Jennings was under no legal obligation to provide his ID. This decision would typically be binding upon remand to the federal trial court, but after the 11th Circuit ruling the trial court invited the Alabama Supreme Court to weigh in.

Arrested While Watering Flowers

The sole basis for the police approaching Jennings was a phone call from a woman who reported that she had seen a Black man near a white family’s home when the family was on vacation. Upon arrival, the first officer on the scene observed Jennings with a water hose and asked him what he was doing. “Watering flowers,” Jennings said. After a further exchange, Jennings told the officers he was “Pastor Jennings,” that he lived across the street, and was looking out for the neighbors’ house while they were gone. When he was asked for ID, Jennings declined to provide it, saying he had done nothing wrong.

Additional officers arrived, ultimately arresting Jennings for refusing to produce identification and charging him with obstructing governmental operations in violation of an Alabama statute that criminalizes obstruction “by means of intimidation, physical force or interference or by any other independently unlawful act.” A municipal court dismissed the charge with prejudice in July 2022.

That September, Jennings filed suit in federal court against the officers and the city of Childersburg, Alabama, claiming unlawful and retaliatory arrest. In December 2023, a federal trial court found the officers and city were entitled to immunity, and Jennings appealed.

Reversing the trial court, the 11th Circuit cited the statutory language and noted that Jennings did not obstruct the officers by means of intimidation, physical force, or interference. Accordingly, probable cause under the statute could only exist if Jennings committed an “independently unlawful act.”

The officers and city argued to the appeals court that Jennings committed an independently unlawful act by failing to identify himself. They relied on a separate statute allowing a police officer to stop someone if he “reasonably suspects” that person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime, and demand of him three things: “his name, address and an explanation of his actions.”

In analyzing whether Jennings committed an independently unlawful act, the 11th Circuit began by noting that, “under the Fourth Amendment, the police are free to ask questions, and the public is free to ignore them.” Accordingly, any legal obligation to answer police questions must arise from state law.

Turning to the statute in question, the 11th Circuit said the plain text authorized police to demand only a person’s name, address and an explanation of his actions, not a driver’s license. The court determined that officers had no probable cause to arrest Jennings for violating the statute, as they never asked for his name or address — information the statute authorized them to demand. And the information Jennings shared with the officers, including his name, where he lived, and what he was doing, closely tracked the disclosures that may be required under the statute.

Following remand to the trial court, the defendants moved to certify a controlling question to the Alabama Supreme Court. The trial court granted this motion in May 2025, certifying the question regarding if an officer is permitted under state law to demand physical identification in such a situation.

Is Textualism Still Sacrosanct in Alabama?

The Alabama Supreme Court generally applies a textualist approach in matters of statutory interpretation. During oral argument, plaintiff’s counsel stressed that before Jennings was asked for ID, he had provided all the information officers are permitted to demand per the statute’s plain language. Accordingly, Jennings was not arrested because the officers did not have the requisite information, but because Jennings failed to produce a physical ID.

Jennings’s counsel emphasized to the justices that, under the defendants’ interpretation, Alabama citizens would need to carry an ID everywhere to avoid being arrested.

The officers and city offered an interpretation of the statute that did not strictly follow its plain text. Rather, the defendants argued that because driver’s licenses contain some of the information officers may demand under the statute, “law enforcement officer[s] can demand the information — name and address — in any form, including a driver’s license.” They also reasoned that the purpose of the statute (identifying a suspect) was best served by interpreting it to allow officers to demand driver’s licenses, even though the statute makes no mention of any form of physical ID.

During the defendants’ argument, Chief Justice Sarah Stewart asked what types of identification officers may demand under their proffered interpretation: “Could he have demanded their passport? And then if he doesn’t give it, he’s going to be arrested for obstruction of justice?” The defendants’ counsel answered that officers could have demanded a passport but suggested a reasonable officer wouldn’t do so.

The case has attracted attention from national groups across the political spectrum. The American Civil Liberties Union, Cato Institute, Woods Foundation, and Southern Poverty Law Center — where I work — filed an amicus brief in support of Jennings. The brief argues that reading the statute to contain “an implicit, unclear obligation to present physical ID” would render the law unconstitutionally vague in violation of due process and broader than its title in violation of a state constitutional provision requiring that “each law shall contain but one subject, which shall be clearly expressed in its title,” among other arguments. State law enforcement groups filed a brief in support of the defendants.

A Questionable Certified Question

At least one justice appeared vexed about the extraordinary procedural posture of the case. Justice Brady Mendheim, the lone dissenter from the court’s consent to answer the certified question, noted the court addressed a “couple of certified questions a year,” but never in the context of a lower federal court asking them to “rule contrary” to a federal appeals court’s decision.

Indeed, two bedrock jurisprudential principles would appear to eliminate any need for the Alabama Supreme Court to become involved in this case. First, under the law of the case doctrine, “district courts and appellate courts are generally bound by a prior appellate decision in the same case,” the 11th Circuit has written.

Separately, the 11th Circuit’s prior precedent rule establishes that once the circuit “has decided an issue in a published decision, that decision is binding on all future panels.” These prior circuit rulings are likewise binding on district courts within the circuit. While the circuit’s decision in the instant case was unpublished and so not precedential under the rule, the court had already reached the same conclusion in an earlier published case. It found in Edger v. McCabe that the statute “does not require anyone to produce an ‘ID’ or ‘driver’s license.’”

The trial court disregarded these principles in certifying its question to the Alabama Supreme Court. Rather than deferring to the 11th Circuit’s holding in the instant case or in Edger, the trial court cited a panel’s subsequent unpublished decision in Metz v. Bridges as a differing interpretation of state law that warranted the Alabama Supreme Court’s intervention. The court in Metz ruled, pursuant to the same statute, that officers had probable cause to arrest men who failed to show ID after refusing to leave a government building.

Mendheim signaled some skepticism of the trial court’s approach during oral argument, noting that accepting a certified question is discretionary and that the “bigger concern” is respect for the federal courts and allowing them to do their job. The 11th Circuit, he added, did not think a certified question was necessary — and neither did the trial court before being overruled.

The case has the potential to represent a major substantive and procedural shift in the administration of justice in Alabama. Can members of the public be arrested for not presenting an ID when a police officer demands one? Will textualism continue to be the prevailing interpretive approach in Alabama? And will Alabama’s federal trial courts be bound by the decisions of their superior court, or should they have recourse to the Alabama Supreme Court when they disagree with the 11th Circuit on an issue of state law? We await the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision, which may come later this year, for the answers.

Suggested Citations: Keisha Stokes-Hough, Arrest of Black Pastor for Refusing to Show ID Reaches Alabama Supreme Court, Sᴛᴀᴛᴇ Cᴏᴜʀᴛ Rᴇᴘᴏʀᴛ (Feb. 27, 2026), https://statecourtreport.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/arrest-black-pastor-refusing-show-id-reaches-alabama-supreme-court