In Nieves v. City of New York, 2024 WL 1363570 (S.D.N.Y., 2024), the court gave a very holiday-centric explanation of what would constitute a facially-invalid arrest warrant:
In any event, Plaintiff asserts a Section 1983 claim for violation of a federal constitutional right. As the Supreme Court has explained, the question here is whether the arrest was “pursuant to a warrant conforming … to the requirements of the Fourth Amendment.” Baker v. McCollan, 443 U.S. 137, 144, 99 S.Ct. 2689, 61 L.Ed.2d 433 (1979). In this context, facial invalidity “mean[s] that a reasonable police officer can look at the face of the warrant and see that it cannot be enforceable—like a warrant signed by Judge Santa Claus, or issued out of the Supreme Court of Heaven.”
To be clear, this is not an ironclad rule; of indeed there is a judge named Santa Claus, the warrant may indeed be valid.