A Kentucky judge has dismissed key charges against two former Louisville police officers involved in the raid that led to the death of Breonna Taylor.

Judge Charles R. Simpson III of the U.S. District Court for Western Kentucky said Thursday that Taylor’s death was the result of the actions of her boyfriend, who opened fire as police arrived at her Louisville apartment on March 13, 2020.

Regardless of whether former Detective Joshua Jaynes and former Sergeant Kyle Meany drafted and approved a forged warrant request, it was friend Kenneth Walker’s shooting of what he saw as intruders that led to a deadly police response, Simpson said.

Taylor, 26, was killed by officers who returned fire.

The case had already been supported by civil rights activists because it was an example of the police’s perceived disregard for the life and rights of a black woman when George Floyd, a black man, was killed by officers in Minneapolis two months later, bringing renewed attention to Taylor’s death.

In 2022, a federal grand jury returned charges against Jaynes, 40, and Meany, 35, accusing them of depriving Taylor of her constitutional right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures resulting in death.

The mechanism cited in the case was Jaynes’ draft of an allegedly false search warrant, which Meany approved, stating that there was sufficient evidence linking Taylor’s residence to illegal drugs.

Jaynes was also charged with conspiring to cover up the search warrant’s lack of substantiation by allegedly creating a supporting document after the fact and then lying to investigators. Meany was charged with lying to federal investigators.

When the charges were announced, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said the charges reflected the core reason the Justice Department exists: to protect Americans’ civil rights.

“These violations resulted in the death of Ms. Taylor,” he said in a statement at the time. “Breonna Taylor should be alive today.”

In his statement on Thursday, Simpson cited a timeline based on what happened at Taylor’s home after the ink on the warrant dried. Jaynes and Meany were not present during the raid, and her death was more directly tied to Walker’s decision to open fire, the judge wrote.

“The Court finds that the warrantless search was not the proximate cause of Taylor’s death,” he wrote in his decision. “The Court also finds that the Death-Results charge requires proof of proximate cause and that the allegations in this case establish that the warrantless search was not the proximate cause of Taylor’s death and, even if it were, KW’s decision to open fire is the legal cause of her death as a superseding cause.”

Simpson’s ruling effectively reduced the civil rights violation charges against Jaynes and Meany, which would have carried maximum life sentences, to misdemeanors.

The charges of covering up the alleged false search warrant and lying to investigators remain in effect, according to the ruling.

Lawyers for the former police officers and Justice Department spokespeople did not immediately respond to requests for comment from NBC News.

The U.S. Justice Department said in an email to the Associated Press news agency that it was “reviewing the judge’s decision and assessing next steps.”

In a statement to the AP, Taylor’s family said they “will continue to fight until full justice is obtained for Taylor.”

“Of course, at this point we are devastated by the judge’s ruling, which we disagree with, and we are just trying to process everything,” the statement said, adding that prosecutors told the family they plan to appeal Simpson’s ruling.

The federal case also included charges against two other former Louisville police officers: Kelly Goodlett, who pleaded guilty in 2022 to conspiracy to forge a search warrant application; and Brett Hankison, who was accused of endangering the lives of Taylor, Walker and nearby neighbors with unconstitutional excessive force when he opened fire during the raid.

Hankinson’s 2023 prosecution ended in a mistrial when a jury failed to reach a verdict on the charges against him. Federal prosecutors said they plan to retry him starting in October.