Cite as: 504 U. S. 158 (1992)
Opinion of the Court
Although the Court of Appeals did not review whether, in the first instance, Cole and Robbins had acted under color of state law within the meaning of § 1983, it affirmed the District Court's grant of qualified immunity to respondents. In so doing, the Court of Appeals followed one of its prior cases, Folsom Investment Co. v. Moore, 681 F. 2d 1032 (CA5 1982), in which it held that "a § 1983 defendant who has invoked an attachment statute is entitled to an immunity from monetary liability so long as he neither knew nor reasonably should have known that the statute was unconstitutional." Id., at 1037. The court in Folsom based its holding on two grounds. First, it viewed the existence of a common law, probable cause defense to the torts of malicious prosecution and wrongful attachment as evidence that "Congress in enacting § 1983 could not have intended to subject to liability those who in good faith resorted to legal process." Id., at 1038. Although it acknowledged that a defense is not the same as an immunity, the court maintained that it could "transfor[m] a common law defense extant at the time of § 1983's passage into an immunity." Ibid. Second, the court held that while immunity for private parties is not derived from official immunity, it is based on "the important public interest in permitting ordinary citizens to rely on presumptively valid state laws, in shielding citizens from monetary damages when they reasonably resort to a legal process later held to be unconstitutional, and in protecting a private citizen from liability when his role in any unconstitutional action is marginal." Id., at 1037. In defending the decision below, respondents advance both arguments put forward by the Court of Appeals in Folsom. Neither is availing.
III
Section 1983 "creates a species of tort liability that on its face admits of no immunities." Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U. S. 409, 417 (1976). Nonetheless, we have accorded certain government officials either absolute or qualified immu-
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