SAN JOSE, Calif. - A federal appeals court has ruled that a San Jose police officer who fired a 40-millimeter foam baton round into a crowd during the 2020 George Floyd demonstrations is protected from one federal civil-rights claim by qualified immunity. But the case is far from over.

In a decision filed November 2, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Officer James Adgar was entitled to qualified immunity from Kyle Johnson’s federal excessive-force claim, even though the court agreed that the force used against Johnson violated the Fourth Amendment.

Read the full Ninth Circuit Opinion

That distinction can sound almost contradictory to someone unfamiliar with the law.

Qualified immunity does not necessarily mean an officer acted lawfully. Instead, under federal law, an officer can sometimes avoid personal liability for violating someone’s constitutional rights unless an earlier court decision had already made it sufficiently clear that the particular conduct was unconstitutional under closely similar circumstances.

Johnson was attending the May 30, 2020 demonstration outside San Jose City Hall when some people in the larger crowd began throwing bottles and other objects toward police officers. Johnson himself did not throw anything. A jury later found that Adgar fired his projectile weapon indiscriminately into the crowd rather than aiming at a particular individual. One of the foam baton rounds struck Johnson behind his left knee. Doctors later attributed blood clots and a pulmonary embolism to the injury.

A jury ultimately sided with Johnson on his claims against Adgar and awarded approximately $1.35 million in damages. Importantly, jurors specifically found that Adgar had fired indiscriminately into the crowd.

The Ninth Circuit nevertheless concluded that existing federal precedent in May 2020 did not clearly establish that Adgar’s conduct was unconstitutional under circumstances similar enough to this case.

Judge Richard Paez disagreed.

In a partial dissent, Paez pointed to the Ninth Circuit’s earlier decision in Nelson v. City of Davis, involving officers firing projectiles toward a group of people. Paez concluded that the earlier case should have provided officers sufficient warning that firing a potentially dangerous projectile indiscriminately into a group of protesters who did not themselves pose an immediate threat was unconstitutional.

But another part of Johnson’s case may eventually prove more significant.

Johnson also sued under California’s Tom Bane Civil Rights Act, a state law allowing lawsuits when constitutional or statutory rights are interfered with through threats, intimidation or coercion.

Instead of deciding that issue itself, the Ninth Circuit took the unusual step of asking the California Supreme Court to answer a fundamental question: When does a constitutional right become sufficiently clear to support liability under California’s Bane Act, and is that standard different from the much-debated federal qualified-immunity test?

The answer could reach well beyond Johnson’s case.

If California’s highest court determines that the Bane Act does not require the same demanding “clearly established law” analysis used in federal qualified-immunity cases, people alleging police misconduct could potentially lose their federal damages claim while still pursuing relief under California law.

In simple terms, California may decide that its civil-rights law provides broader protection than federal qualified-immunity doctrine does.

That would leave an unusual but increasingly important legal reality: A court could determine that a police officer violated the Constitution, conclude that federal law nevertheless shields the officer from that particular civil-rights claim, and still permit liability under California law.

For Johnson—and potentially many future civil-rights plaintiffs—the California Supreme Court’s answer may now be the most consequential part of the case.