The US Supreme Court Monday declined a petition for a writ of certiorari filed by Black Lives Matter organizer DeRay Mckesson, effectively allowing him to be sued by a Louisiana police officer for negligence.

The case at bar, DeRay Mckesson v. John Doe, centers around a protest that took place in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on July 9, 2016, after police officers fatally shot Alton Sterling while responding to an anonymous 911 call. According to Mckesson’s petition, the protest was “initially peaceful, although some demonstrators began to throw plastic water bottles in the direction of police.” Soon thereafter, an officer, identified as John Doe, was struck by a “rock-like object” and consequently suffered severe injuries.

Though Mckesson did not throw the object, Doe sued Mckesson for the injuries he sustained, reasoning that Mckesson “knew or should have known that the physical contact and riot and demonstration that they staged would become violent as other similar riots had become violent.” A district court in Louisiana dismissed the action, finding that the right to associate found in the First Amendment of the US Constitution precludes Doe from pleading a plausible claim for relief. Doe appealed, and the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed the district court’s decision, finding that Mckesson may be held liable under a theory of “negligent protest.”

Both the district court and the Fifth Circuit looked to NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co., a 1982 case in which the Supreme Court held that speech during an assembly must incite imminent wrongdoing to be punishable. Specifically, the court ruled that the First Amendment “does not protect violence” and “for liability to be imposed because of association alone, it is necessary to establish that the group itself possessed unlawful goals and that the individual held a specific intent to further these illegal aims.”

The district court relied on Claiborne in concluding that “when a tort is committed in the context of an activity that is otherwise protected by the First Amendment, courts must use ‘precision’ in determining who may be held liable for the tortious conduct so that the guarantees of the First Amendment are not undermined.” The Fifth Circuit found that “liability on the facts alleged here comports with Claiborne‘s demand for “precision of regulation.”

In a dissenting opinion, Judge Don Willett argued that the Fifth Circuit’s decision would make organizers liable for “the unlawful acts of counter-protestors and agitators.” After the Supreme Court declined to hear the case on appeal, the ACLU posted on X (formerly Twitter):

The Court’s decision not to hear this case does not mean it agrees with [the Fifth Circuit’s] ruling to hold protest leaders accountable for illegal acts committed by third parties. We will continue fighting for our protest rights, including working to ensure the Fifth Circuit’s erroneous reasoning has no effect in this case or any others.