Former LA Sheriff Alex Villanueva Wins Immunity in Lawsuit Over Protesters Shot With Projectiles

Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva is entitled to qualified immunity in an excessive force lawsuit brought by two protesters who allege deputies shot them with projectiles as they retreated from a 2020 demonstration, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday, October 21, 2026. The decision reverses a lower court ruling that allowed the claim against Villanueva to move forward.

Christina Astorga and Hugo Padilla were attending a protest in South Los Angeles when the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department declared the gathering an unlawful assembly and ordered demonstrators to disperse. According to court records, the two allege that deputies fired less-lethal projectiles as they retreated, striking and injuring them.

The protesters sued Villanueva under federal civil rights law, alleging violations of their Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, including excessive force by law enforcement officers. Their claims sought to hold the former sheriff personally responsible for the actions of deputies under his command.

Villanueva, who was absent from the demonstration, argued that his lack of personal involvement entitled him to qualified immunity. U.S. District Judge André Birotte Jr. denied his request for summary judgment, allowing the claim against him to proceed and prompting his appeal.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed that decision, finding that the protesters had failed to identify an earlier ruling establishing that Villanueva's own conduct as a supervisor violated their constitutional rights.

The judges compared his actions with those of a Los Angeles police chief in Larez v. City of Los Angeles, a case in which the chief endorsed officers' excessive use of force and signed a letter indicating they would face no disciplinary action despite constitutional violations.

Villanueva's conduct differed, the panel found, because he had taken no comparable affirmative steps to approve or encourage his deputies' actions after the protest or dismiss complaints against them. That distinction was central to the court's conclusion that the earlier ruling did not clearly establish the unlawfulness of his supervisory conduct.

Qualified immunity shields government officials from personal civil liability unless their actions violate clearly established constitutional or federal statutory rights. In cases involving supervisors, plaintiffs must identify existing law that would have made the supervisor's own conduct unlawful, even when the underlying allegations concern actions taken by subordinate officers.

The panel also rejected comparisons to two earlier Ninth Circuit cases involving officers who personally used projectiles or other forms of force. Those decisions addressed frontline officers' conduct rather than the responsibility of a sheriff overseeing deputies.

Circuit Judges Ryan Nelson and Roopali Desai, joined by U.S. District Judge Karen Schreier, concluded that the protesters had failed to establish the legal basis required to overcome Villanueva's immunity defense. The ruling reverses the district court's decision to allow the excessive force claim against him to proceed.

The decision grants Villanueva qualified immunity from the claim against him while leaving the constitutionality of the deputies' alleged actions undecided. Los Angeles County and the Sheriff's Department are also named in the underlying lawsuit, although their liability was outside the scope of this appeal.

The Ninth Circuit issued its ruling in an unpublished memorandum, which generally does not serve as binding precedent in future cases.