In what circumstances will a former official be qualified for immunity from prosecution under section 5(f) of the Civil Rights Act?

In this case, the appellants assert rights that did not exist as a matter of federal law. Even were we to discover at some later time that some variant of those rights must be adopted into the law surrounding section 5(f) of the Act, that would not deprive these former officials of qualified immunity. At the time they acted, the contours of federal law had not been established. In other words, this case is not at all like Ostlund v. Bobb, 825 F.2d 1371 (9th Cir.1987), cert. denied, 486 U.S. 1033, 108 S.Ct. 2016, 100 L.Ed.2d 603 (1988), upon which appellants put great reliance. This was not a situation where there was a mere absence of a specific binding precedent; it was a situation where officials would have been forced to predict the future course of section 5(f) jurisprudence. That they were not required to do. Id. at 1374.