Cite as: 516 U. S. 299 (1996)
Opinion of the Court
In any event, the proposition is not sound. That one appeal on the immunity issue may not be enough is illustrated by the history of respondent's claims for loss of employment at Pioneer in the present case. Because these claims had initially been dismissed as time barred, the Court of Appeals refused to decide (and thus evidently regarded as an open question) whether one who holds his job subject to regulatory approval can assert a constitutionally cognizable expectation of continued employment. See Pelletier, supra, at 871-872. Thus, the question whether petitioner was entitled to immunity on these claims was not presented to any court until petitioner's summary judgment motion—and, by operation of the Ninth Circuit's one-appeal rule, has never been addressed by an appellate court.
That is assuredly an unusual set of circumstances, but even in a case proceeding in a more normal fashion resolution of the immunity question may "require more than one judiciously timed appeal," because the legally relevant factors bearing upon the Harlow question will be different on summary judgment than on an earlier motion to dismiss. At that earlier stage, it is the defendant's conduct as alleged in the complaint that is scrutinized for "objective legal reasonableness." On summary judgment, however, the plaintiff can no longer rest on the pleadings, see Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 56, and the court looks to the evidence before it (in the light most favorable to the plaintiff) when conducting the Harlow inquiry. It is no more true that the defendant who has unsuccessfully appealed denial of a motion to dismiss has no need to appeal denial of a motion for summary judgment, than it is that the defendant who has unsuccessfully made a motion to dismiss has no need to make a motion for summary judgment.3
3 Justice Breyer suggests that the second of two pretrial qualified-immunity appeals does not come within Cohen's class of immediately ap-
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