NYPD officers who arrested a lawyer who was speaking with demonstrators gathered in Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan to commemorate the Occupy Wall Street movement are entitled to immunity from a false-arrest suit, a federal appeals court ruled on Monday.

Writing for a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Judge John Walker Jr. reversed the decision of Southern District Judge Andrew Carter Jr. that rejected New York City's qualified immunity defense from the suit.

Attorney Stephen Kass, senior environmental counsel at Carter Ledyard & Milburn, was not blocking pedestrian traffic on Sept. 17, 2013, while having a brief conversation with people gathered at Zuccotti Park, Walker said, but refused to comply with an officer's orders to either keep moving or to join the protesters.