"You need to buy the game" hardly makes it a gray area.
So no, there's no legal way to use a switch emulator. At least not for playing commercial switch games, I guess you could theoretically home brew your own game to play on an emulator.
Not a lawyer but as I understand it, the case resulted in a settlement and as such no legal determination was made. They didn't prove anything in court and no precedent was set regarding the legality of emulation.