On December 19, 2008, the district court issued a memorandum opinion and order granting in part and denying in part defendants' motion for reconsideration. The district court denied the motion to the extent defendants were seeking reconsideration of the court's order under
Fed.R.Civ.P. 59(e) because, in the court's view, defendants were “clearly attempting to use
Rule 59(e) to raise legal arguments that they could have and should have raised prior to judgment.” App. at 179 (internal quotation marks and brackets omitted). The district court granted the motion, however, to the extent it sought a determination that O'Brien was entitled to qualified immunity and was thus immune from liability. Focusing on whether the constitutional right at issue was clearly established at the time of Herrera's arrest, the district court concluded that the case law “interpreting New Mexico's child abuse statute,”
N.M. Stat. § 30–6–1, was not clearly established at the time of Herrera's arrest, and that, in turn, an officer could have, based upon the circumstances encountered at Herrera's apartment, reasonably but mistakenly concluded that Herrera had violated the child abuse statute by placing her son “in a zone of danger.”
Id. at 182. In other words, the district court concluded that “[a]n officer's mistaken belief that he or she could arrest on these undisputed facts [wa]s not objectively unreasonable given that [the] New Mexico courts ha [d] continued to clarify what constitute[d] a crime under
N.M.S.A. § 30–6–1 since the time of [Herrera's] arrest.”
Id. The district court in turn concluded that O'Brien was “entitled to qualified immunity.”
Id. at 186. Lastly, the district court concluded that, “[b]ecause there [we]re no federal claims remaining after finding qualified immunity for ... O'Brien,” “the best course of action would be to decline to exercise its supplemental jurisdiction and allow the New Mexico state courts to decide the issues of state law that remain[ed].”
Id. at 187.