Tam Nguyen v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

BIBAS, Circuit Judge.

A claim that a search was unconstitutional accrues when the officer conducts the search, not when a court later declares it unconstitutional. So the statute of limitations runs from the time of the search, not the time of the court decision.

Here, Tam Thanh Nguyen sued Pennsylvania State Trooper Jared Bromberg for a 2012 search and arrest, but only after a 2015 Pennsylvania court decision held that search unconstitutional. Nguyen's suit thus arrives more than a year late and is time-barred, so we will affirm.

I. FACTS

In January 2012, Nguyen caught a ride home from a New…