Cite as: 520 U. S. 641 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
to I-7, and that petitioner Wood erroneously rejected his appeal as exceeding the page limitation, id., at I-7 to I-8.)
There is, however, this critical difference from Heck: Respondent, in his amended complaint, limited his request to damages for depriving him of good-time credits without due process, not for depriving him of good-time credits undeservedly as a substantive matter.* That is to say, his claim posited that the procedures were wrong, but not necessarily that the result was. The distinction between these two sorts of claims is clearly established in our case law, as is the plaintiff's entitlement to recover at least nominal damages under § 1983 if he proves the former one without also proving the latter one. See Carey v. Piphus, 435 U. S. 247, 266-267 (1978). The Court of Appeals was of the view that this difference from Heck was dispositive, following Circuit precedent to the effect that a claim challenging only the procedures employed in a disciplinary hearing is always cognizable under § 1983. See App. to Pet. for Cert. A-2, citing Gotcher v. Wood, 66 F. 3d 1097, 1099 (CA9 1995), cert. pending, No. 95-1385.
That principle is incorrect, since it disregards the possibility, clearly envisioned by Heck, that the nature of the challenge to the procedures could be such as necessarily to imply the invalidity of the judgment. This possibility is alluded to in the very passage from Heck relied upon by the Court of Appeals, a passage that distinguished the earlier case of Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U. S. 539 (1974), as follows:
"In light of the earlier language characterizing the claim as one of 'damages for the deprivation of civil rights,' rather than damages for the deprivation of good-time credits, we think this passage recognized a § 1983 claim for using the wrong procedures, not for reaching the
*The amended complaint could be considered ambiguous on the point, but this was the Court of Appeals' interpretation, which has been accepted by petitioners. Brief for Petitioners 5.
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