Legally, given the facts and circumstances, mostly agreed. (Though, hell, I think even Kagan and Scalia were complaining a few years ago about the circuits splitting on these questions.)
Practically, I still argue it is. I'm not going out on a limb in saying that most people, cops or not, don't have a running list of unlawful behaviors for which there is clear judicial precedent. Which means when they commit an act, there is ambiguity--reasonable ambiguity, given we're consulting a litany versus heuristic--with respect to its legality. On a legal level, this is true of any action. On a practical level, it's not. (And the argument against limitedly abolishing qualified immunity largely revolves around it not being.)
I've watched two law firms evaluating a specific case with respect to a hypothetical amendment to qualified immunity statute come to wildly different conclusions about how it would be interpreted by the courts. That is practically grey area, even if legally it's operating on a hard-bound checklist. (New York State law is also a mess in this particular respect.)
Colloquially, if given a set of facts and circumstances it cannot confidently predict how the courts would rule, where questions must be answered about extraordinary circumstances and whether this unlawful action was sufficiently close to that case, the law can be said to be ambiguous and grey.
(Note: not sure why you're being downvoted. It's a good comment. To a striking degree, it illustrates the root of this issue, politically--the spirit of the law deviates wildly from its practice.)
Not particularly.
> Government actions are protected so long as they are legal.
Generally, actions which are legal are not subject to legal liability, you don’t need immunity when your action isn’t illegal.
Illegal government actions are often protected by governmental immunities, but that’s not the issue here.
Illegal individual actions by government agents related to their job duties may be covered by either absolute or qualified immunity, based on the rules applicable to each type of immunity.
> If someone orders an illegal action, they are no longer protected by being government agents because they weren’t lawfully acting in their capacities as one.
No, such an order could easily be covered by either absolute or qualified immunity. For instance, an illegal Presidential order is within the coverage of the President's absolute immunity. An order from an official not covered by or doing the kinds of duties subject to absolute immunity, which despite being illegal is not of a kind which a closely similar fact pattern has been definitively found to be illegal in the past, would fall within qualified immunity, generally.
> If someone knowingly follows an illegal order, they too bear the burden.
If they know or had constructive notice through an applicable ruling that the order was illegal, sure, provided absolute immunity doesn’t apply (note that “knowingly followed an illegal order” can mean “knowingly followed an order, which order factually was illegal whether or not that was known”.)