A Seattle federal appeals court stated Friday that the aggressive actions by three Washington police officers committed against a pregnant woman in 2004 were indeed warranted. The judge also granted the three men immunity from a lawsuit that was brought on by the woman, after she was stun gunned by the officers for just refusing to sign a traffic ticket.

Malaika Brooks was seven months pregnant and had her young son in tow back in 2004, when she was driving him to his elementary school, the African-American Academy in Seattle. Three police officers stopped the young woman for allegedly doing 32 mph in a school zone. She was presented with a traffic ticket and was asked to sign it, but she refused. Brooks tried explaining to the officers that the car in front of her was actually the guilty party. The officers refused to accept her story.

Brooks tried telling the officers that signing of the ticket meant an admission of guilt. The men still insisted on a signature. When she did not comply, the policemen chose to arrest her. One man reached in to her vehicle, turned it off, then threw her keys on to the ground.

The petrified woman stiffened her arms on her steering wheel, told the men she was pregnant and refused to get out of the vehicle. The law enforcement trio threatened to use a stun gun Brooks if she failed to obey their commands.

Officers Sgt. Steven Daman, Juan Ornelas and Donald Jones stunned Brooks a total of three times: each in the thigh, shoulder and neck. The men then proceeded to drag Brooks out of her car and forced her on to the concrete pavement, face-down.

Only two months after the being put through such a terrifying ordeal, Brooks gave birth to a healthy baby.

Brooks received scars from the incident, which are still evident nearly five years later. She decided to sue the officers for violating her Constitutional rights, and U.S. District Judge Richard Jones allowed the case to continue. He declined to grant the officers immunity for performing their official duties and said Brooks' rights had without a doubt been violated.

On Friday, however, a panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed and ruled that the officers had indeed been justified in their actions, because Brooks had resisted arrest. Judge Cynthia Holcomb Hall, a female and one of the judicial bodies involved in the ruling, said that the use of force was also warranted, "It seems clear that Brooks was not going to be able to harm anyone with her car at a moment's notice. Nonetheless, some threat she might retrieve the keys and drive off erratically remained, particularly given her refusal to leave the car and her state of agitation."

The judges concluded that the force the officers used was not so harmful, because the stun gun was in "touch" rather than "dart" mode -- the latter is more painful. The judges also reversed the lawsuit immunity ruling, so the policemen cannot be sued.

Judge Marsha Berzon, also a federal appeals judge, is up in arms about the new ruling and is shocked by her colleague's decision. Judge Berzon called the ruling "off the wall." She told the Associated Press, "I fail utterly to comprehend how my colleagues are able to conclude that it was objectively reasonable to use any force against Brooks, let alone three activations of a Taser, in response to such a trivial offense," she wrote. She argued that under Washington law, the officers had no authority to take Brooks into custody: Failure to sign a traffic infraction is not an arrestable offense, and it's not illegal to resist an unlawful arrest. Furthermore, Brooks posed no apparent threat, and the officers could not have known how stunning her would affect the fetus or whether it might prompt premature labor -- another reason their actions were inexcusable, Berzon said.

Brooks' lawyer Eric Zubel will make a request of the 9th Circuit to rehear the case.