¶1*287Christina Maria Murphy, St. Louis, MO (Jeremiah W. (Jay) Nixon, John R. Munich and Christina M. Murphy, on the brief), for appellants.
¶2Jeffrey T. Demerath, St. Louis, MO, for appellees.
¶3Before WOLLMAN, Circuit Judge, BRIGHT, Senior Circuit Judge and MURPHY, Circuit Judge.
¶5Courtney Lovelace, Robert Williams, Franz Williams and Charles Stevenson, inmates at the Potosi Correctional Center, brought this § 1983 action against several employees of the Missouri Department of Corrections, alleging various due process violations in connection with disciplinary proceedings instituted after a prison riot. The state defendants moved for summary judgment and to stay discovery pending the district court’s determination of whether the defendants are entitled to qualified immunity. The district court1 denied the motion to stay discovery. We affirm.
¶6I.
¶7On August 16, 1992, a riot occurred at the Potosi Correctional Center. Immediately thereafter, several inmates, including the named plaintiffs, were placed in temporary administrative confinement and issued conduct violations for their alleged involvement in the riot. On September 21, 1992, each plaintiff appeared before a disciplinary hearing officer who referred their ease to the Adjustment Board after determining their alleged violations to be “major.” At the Adjustment Board hearing, held on September 28, 1992, the Board found plaintiffs guilty and sanctioned them. Plaintiffs then sought to have the Board’s decision reversed upon internal review, but such attempts proved unavailing.
¶8Plaintiffs then filed this § 1983 action pro se, alleging that the prison officials violated their due process rights by not conducting impartial hearings, by not allowing the plaintiffs to call witnesses on their behalf, and by basing the plaintiffs’ guilt on insufficient evidence. Appointed counsel subsequently contacted the assistant attorney general and repeatedly attempted to schedule depositions of the defendants. Unsuccessful, plaintiffs’ counsel by late June 1994 had secured little evidence to support plaintiffs’ constitutional claims. On June 30, 1994, the state defendants moved for summary judgment on the ground that no due process rights had been violated and that they are entitled to qualified immunity. On the same day, defendants also moved to stay discovery until the court decided the issue of defendants’ entitlement to qualified immunity. The district court denied defendants’ motion to stay discovery and the correctional officials filed this appeal.
¶9II.
¶10The correctional officials’ primary contention on appeal is that to allow discovery now — before the district court rules on defendants’ qualified immunity defense — would defeat the very purpose behind the defense of qualified immunity. Citing the Supreme Court’s decision in Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 814, 817-18, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 2737-38, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982), the defendants correctly note that qualified immunity operates to protect governmental officials from both the burdens of trial and discovery. However, if the plaintiffs’ allegations state a claim of violation of clearly established law and the parties disagree as to what actions the law enforcement officers took, discovery may be appropriate for the limited purpose of addressing the issue of qualified immunity. Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 646 n. 6, 107 S.Ct. 3034, 3042 n. 6, 97 L.Ed.2d 523 (1987); Mitchell v. Forsyth, 4Í12 U.S. 511, 526, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 2815, 86 L.Ed.2d 411 (1985). We believe that is the situation here.
¶12Consequently, the district court did not abuse its discretion in allowing the discovery to proceed. We therefore affirm the district court’s order, noting, however, that discovery sought at this stage is limited to circumstances surrounding the question of qualified immunity.2