The Supreme Court ruled in favor of police officers in two separate cases today, in which officers were accused of using excessive force against suspects.

The Supreme Court struck down rulings from two lower courts that ruled in favor of moving forward with the prosecution of the accused officers. The high court did so by approving the officer’s requests for legal protection known as “qualified immunity,” which is a legal remedy that has been a hotly debated topic among police reform activists and their critics.

The Justices overturned a ruling by a lower court to move forward with a trial against two Oklahoma police officers who fatally shot an armed suspect. The second case, from California, involved a lawsuit against a police officer accused of using excessive force while disarming and handcuffing a suspect.

Plaintiffs in each case accused the officers of violating their Fourth Amendment rights.

If a plaintiff launches a civil lawsuit over a violation of their constitutional rights during an interaction with the police, officers can request qualified immunity, which dismisses the case if the officer’s use of force is determined to be objectively reasonable, according to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers.

Qualified immunity attaches when an official’s conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known,” explained the Justice’s per curiam opinion from the California case. “A right is clearly established when it is ‘sufficiently clear that every reasonable official would have understood that what he is doing violates that right.’

The California opinion pointed out that in context to the Fourth Amendment “it is sometimes difficult for an officer to determine how the relevant legal doctrine, here excessive force, will apply to the factual situation the officer confronts.”

The opinion said that determining whether an officer used excessive force “depends on ‘the facts and circumstances of each particular case, including the severity of the crime at issue, whether the suspect poses an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others, and whether he is actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight.’”