A retaliatory arrest or retaliatory prosecution is an arrest or prosecution undertaken in retaliation for a person's exercise of their civil rights. It is a form of prosecutorial misconduct.

The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with the United States and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. (February 2022)

In Hartman v. Moore in 2006, the United States Supreme Court ruled that for a prosecution to be found retaliatory, it must have been brought without probable cause.^[1][2]

In the 2018 case of Lozman v. City of Riviera Beach, Riviera Beach, Florida argued that the logic of Hartman extended to retaliatory arrest. The Supreme Court issued a narrow ruling that plaintiff Fane Lozman was able to bring the claim despite there having been probable cause for his arrest.^[3][4] A year later, they answered the broader question, holding in Nieves v. Bartlett that probable cause defeats a claim of retaliatory arrest unless the plaintiff can show that others have typically not been arrested for similar conduct.^[5][6]

• Contempt of cop
• Arbitrary arrest and detention
• 42 U.S.C. § 1983, governing claims against state actors for denial of constitutional rights
• Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents, governing claims against federal actors