a necessary precursor for any judicial relief. In 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court in Saucier v. Katz formalized this rigid order, or sequencing, in which courts must decide the merits of a defendant's qualified immunity defense. First, the court determines whether the complaint states a constitutional violation. If so, the next sequential step is to determine whether the right at issue was clearly established at the time of the official's conduct. The Court subsequently modified this mandatory sequencing from Saucier in Pearson v. Callahan in 2009, holding that "the Saucier protocol should not be regarded as mandatory in all cases," and that its decision "does not prevent the lower courts from following the Saucier procedure; it simply recognizes that those courts should have the discretion to decide whether that procedure is worthwhile in particular cases." The Pearson opinion gave courts the discretion to evaluate either the constitutional violation or the rights issue first. This can have benefits of expediting some cases and reducing waste of resources in the court system, but has also led to cases that focus heavily on one side of the case and weigh in favor of government officials, particularly in the area of police brutality. Objections and criticisms Difficulty of suing public officials Critics have argued that qualified immunity makes it excessively difficult to sue public officials for misconduct. Criticism is aimed in particular at the "clearly established law" test. This test is typically read as requiring not only that an official's behavior likely violates written law but that there exists a clear judicial precedent that establishes the behavior as unlawful. Critics have noted that in practice this has meant that plaintiffs must prove that there exists a prior court determination made in actual litigation under facts extremely close to those of the case at hand exists, or else the case is dismissed. Critics argue that the difficulty plaintiffs face in finding an exact match in both law and precedent makes it excessively challenging to sue public officials, giving government officials undue latitude for lawless conduct in new or unusual situations. George Leef, for instance, argued in Forbes that: Critics have cited examples such as a November 2018 ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which found that an earlier court case ruling it unconstitutional for police to sic dogs on suspects who have surrendered by lying on the ground did