Skip to content
Start an Inquiry

Decision record

Facts known to the officer may not be excised before totality review

Case: District of Columbia, Petitioner v. R.W.Comparison published: 2026-04-29 Determination published 92 days before this comparison. The underlying determination is NLI SCOTUS Resolution 0040, published 2026-01-27. Publication dates are timestamped by Substack, not by NLI. The decisive question May a court categorically exclude facts known to the officer before assessing reasonable suspicion under the totality…

Record Boundary

The status, NLI role, publication authority, observed result, material limitations, version, and correction path below define what this record may responsibly claim.

Status
Comparative determination
Application
Comparative determination
Forum / context
Supreme Court of the United States · Comparative determination

Decisive question

May a court categorically exclude facts known to the officer before assessing reasonable suspicion under the totality of the circumstances?

Controlling dependency

Whether reasonable suspicion is assessed on the whole picture, or only on the facts surviving a prior round of excision.

Defeat condition

Authority permitting the exclusion of known circumstances before totality analysis would have defeated the construction.

Case: District of Columbia, Petitioner v. R.W.
Comparison published: 2026-04-29

Determination published 92 days before this comparison. The underlying determination is NLI SCOTUS Resolution 0040, published 2026-01-27. Publication dates are timestamped by Substack, not by NLI.

The decisive question

May a court categorically exclude facts known to the officer before assessing reasonable suspicion under the totality of the circumstances?

The controlling dependency

Whether reasonable suspicion is assessed on the whole picture, or only on the facts surviving a prior round of excision.

The defeat condition

Authority permitting the exclusion of known circumstances before totality analysis would have defeated the construction.

How it compared

Full alignment on outcome and substantial alignment on structural diagnosis. The recorded error is mechanical only: the determination anticipated plenary merits treatment, while the Court corrected the analytical method by per curiam reversal.

NLI’s role

Published analysis only. No participation in the case.

Limits of this record

NLI was not counsel, a party, or a participant in this case, and filed nothing in it. This record establishes only that NLI published the stated determination on the stated date and how that determination compared with the decision the Court later reached. It does not establish that NLI influenced the outcome, that NLI’s reasoning was adopted, or that a comparable result should be expected in any other matter.

Read the full comparison on Substack