Cite as: 523 U. S. 574 (1998)
Opinion of the Court
case and in Harlow itself assumed that Fitzgerald would be entitled to prevail but for the immunity defenses.11 Thus, although evidence of improper motive is irrelevant on the issue of qualified immunity, it may be an essential component of the plaintiff's affirmative case. Our holding in Harlow, which related only to the scope of an affirmative defense, provides no support for making any change in the nature of the plaintiff's burden of proving a constitutional violation.
Nevertheless, the en banc court's ruling makes just such a change in the plaintiff's cause of action. The court's clear and convincing evidence requirement applies to the plaintiff's showing of improper intent (a pure issue of fact), not to the separate qualified immunity question whether the official's alleged conduct violated clearly established law, which is an "essentially legal question." Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U. S. 511, 526-529 (1985); see Gomez, 446 U. S., at 640 ("[T]his Court has never indicated that qualified immunity is relevant to the existence of the plaintiff's cause of action"). Indeed, the court's heightened proof standard logically should govern even if the official never asserts an immunity defense. See 93 F. 3d, at 815, 838. Such a rule is not required by the holding in Harlow.
11 See Siegert v. Gilley, 500 U. S. 226, 232 (1991) (observing that "the determination of whether the plaintiff has asserted a violation of a constitutional right at all" is a "necessary concomitant" to the threshold immunity question). Indeed, when Justice Ginsburg was a judge on the District of Columbia Circuit, she commented: "Had the Court [in Harlow] intended its formulation of the qualified immunity defense to foreclose all inquiry into the defendants' state of mind, the Court might have instructed the entry of judgment for defendants Harlow and Butterfield on the constitutional claim without further ado. In fact, the Court returned the case to the district court in an open-ended remand, a disposition hardly consistent with a firm intent to delete the state of mind inquiry from every constitutional tort calculus." Martin, 812 F. 2d, at 1432.
This correct understanding explains why Harlow does not support the change in the law advocated by The Chief Justice, post, at 602.
589
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