Wichita ? A Harvey County sheriff’s deputy accused of entering a family’s front yard without a warrant and killing their dog must face trial in the civil lawsuit brought by the animal’s owners, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Kent and Tonya Mayfield in ruling that the Halstead couple provided sufficient facts to show a “clearly established violation of their Fourth Amendment rights.” Animals, including dogs, constitute personal property that’s protected by the right against unreasonable searches and seizures, the court said.

The Mayfield’s lawsuit said Deputy Jim Bethards and his partner entered their property on July 13, 2014, without a warrant with the intention of killing their two dogs, shooting at both dogs and killing their white Malamute Husky, Majka. Their complaint cited a witness who said neither dog acted aggressively.

The lawsuit contends Bethards shot Majka three times on the front porch, and then he and his partner unsuccessfully searched for the family’s brown dog, Suka, which had fled to the back of the house and disappeared into a wooded section of the property. The deputies then allegedly moved Majka’s body and tried to hide her body in a row of trees.

The deputy had contended in a police report that killing the dog was reasonable because he thought Majka had attacked livestock and believed Kansas law allows anyone to kill a dog reported to have done so.

Bethards had asked a district judge dismiss the lawsuit, arguing dogs are not subject to Fourth Amendment protection and that killing Majka was reasonable under the circumstances as a matter of law. The district judge denied that request, and the three-judge appellate panel agreed with the lower court’s rejection of Bethards’ argument that he had qualified immunity as a government official that protects him from suit for civil damages.

The federal appeals court also noted the Kansas Supreme Court has ruled in another case that it is the burden of a defendant to show he was justified in shooting a dog, and that the question of whether a livestock owner in “hot pursuit” enters a dog owner’s property “with consent or implied consent” is a question for a jury to decide.

The Mayfields told Harvey County Sheriff T. Walton that the accusation their dog had mauled a neighbor’s livestock a year earlier was a case of “mistaken identity,” and that the offending dog had been shot by the livestock owner and later put down as a result of those shotgun wounds, the court noted.