Not everyone believes that banks are the safest or most desirable place to keep cold, hard cash, notwithstanding the existence of safeguards like federal deposit insurance. Howard and Sarah Harrell were among the skeptics. The Harrells had in excess of $95,-000 stashed away in a cooler in the crawl space under their house. One day, they discovered that the cash, but not the cooler, had vanished. This case arises out of their belief that the local police department bungled the investigation, or worse, when it lost key evidence. They sued Jacksonville, Illinois, police officers Donald Cook, Jack Woods, John Keenan, and any unknown officers involved in the disappearance of the cooler under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that the officers deprived them of their due рrocess rights to proceed against the suspected thief in court. The police responded with a motion to dismiss, which the district court denied. Before us now is the narrow question whether the district court correctly rejected the officers’ claim of qualified immunity. We сonclude that the court should have granted the officers’ motion and dismissed the claims against them.
I
This case centers around one of two large containers the Harrells had buried in the crawl space beneath their house. One of the containers was an ordinаry chest cooler, in which the Harrells had placed the extraordinary amount of $95,854.70. On July 11,1995, the Harrells discovered that the chest cooler had been unearthed and its contents were missing. The only other party who had had access to the crawl space where the money was buried was a contractor whom the Har-rells had hired to work on their home between January 9 and July 11,1995.
The Harrells took their story and the now-empty cooler (as well as some smaller containers housed therein that the Harrells had used for organizing the money) to the Jacksonville Police. They spoke with Assistant Police Chief John Keenan, who told them that the contractor was his number-one suspect. (There is some disagreement in the record about the spelling of the name of defendant John “Keenan.” We use here thе spelling that Keenan’s lawyer adopted, rather than plaintiffs’ “Canaan” or the district court’s “Keehan.”) Keenan accepted possession of the cooler and its containers, saying that he would have them tested for fingerprints. The next day, Keenan told the Har-rells that he would be sending investigators to their home to pursue the lost funds. More than two weeks later, Jacksonville Police Officer Jack Woods arrived to photograph the Harrell home. He broke the bad news that the cooler and its containers were missing, apparently lost by the police department. Although the Jacksonville police had a policy of placing evidence in the department’s evidence room, the Harrells’ evidence had last been seen in the police garage by Assistant Chief Keenan and Officers Woods and Cook.
Following the disappearance of the cooler, the Harrells repeatedly met with Cook to encourage the continued investigation of the theft. Despite their efforts, the police dropped the criminal case and made no effort to pursue the loss of the cooler. Moreover, as the Harrells’ attorney explained at oral argument, without the cooler and the fingerprints they hoped to find on it, the Harrells did not believe they had enough evidence to pursue a сivil claim for conversion against the contractor. Apparently without recourse against the suspected thief, the Harrells turned to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and brought this three-count complaint against the City of Jacksonville and its police department, and against Keenan, Woods, Cоok, and any unknown officer or officers who disposed of or absconded with the Harrells’ evidence.
Count I of the Harrells’ complaint alleged that the individual officers deprived them of their rights to proceed against the person or persons responsible fоr the theft of their money. Count II alleged that the defendants acted intentionally and sought punitive damages. In Count III, the Harrells argued that the City of Jacksonville maintained a custom or policy of not investigating citizen complaints of wrongdoing by the police force, a claim that was dismissed by the district court and is not a subject of this appeal.
*431 The defendants filed a motion to dismiss on the ground that they were entitled to qualified immunity, because the Harrells faded to allege a violation of a clearly established federal right. The district cоurt denied the motion, finding first that the plaintiffs had properly alleged a violation of their right to meaningful access to the courts, as provided by the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The court further found that this constitutional right was clearly established at the time of the alleged violatiоn, and hence the defendants were not protected by qualified immunity.
II
Relief under § 1983 is available to a plaintiff who can demonstrate that a person acting under color of state law deprived the plaintiff of a right, privilege, or immunity secured either by the Constitution or by fеderal law.
Parratt v.
Taylor,
Beсause qualified immunity is designed to protect defendants from the burden of suit, as well as the burden of liability, it is a question that should be resolved as promptly as possible. For that reason, the Supreme Court has recognized that defendants are entitled to take an immediate appeal under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 from a denial of qualified immunity, as long as the resolution of the immunity issue itself does not turn on disputed facts. See,
e.g., Behrens v. Pelletier,
In undertaking our analysis of the Harrells’ claims, it is necessary to consider Counts I and II of the complaint separately. Count I alleges that the defendants improperly stored the Harrells’ evidence and then refused to investigate its loss, causing the deprivation of the Harrеlls’ right to proceed in court. Nowhere does it allege an intentional interference with that right, however, and thus it boils down to a claim of negligent interference with the right of access to the courts. In contrast, Count II alleges an intentional violation of the plaintiffs’ сonstitutional rights. Paragraph 27 maintains that the defendants “acted intentionally to deprive plaintiffs of their rights by disposing of or absconding with plaintiffs’ evidence.” This language is sufficient to encompass the claim that the defendants intentionally rid themselves of the cooler in оrder to prevent the Harrells from suing the person whom they believed to have stolen their money. The defendants have remarked that this allegation also resembles a state law tort claim for spoliation of evidence, see
Boyd v. Travelers
*432
Insurance Co.,
As we noted above, when the defendants have raised an immunity defense, the plaintiffs’ initial burden is to show that they have asserted a violation of a constitutional or statutory right. With respect to Count I, the Harrells have failed to do so. It is well established that negligent conduct by a government official is insufficient to support a claim under § 1983.
Daniels v. Williams,
Although it is a closer matter, we also conclude that the defendants are entitled to qualified immunity with respect to Count II. The first question we must answer is whether the Harrells have asserted a violation of a constitutional right. Our decision in Vasquez v. Hernandez, 60 F.3d 325 (7th Cir.1995), as well as earlier eases cited there, establishes that they have.
The right of individuals to pursue legal redress for claims which have a reasonable basis in law and fact is protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Bill Johnson’s Restaurants, Inc. v. NLRB,461 U.S. 731 , 741,103 S.Ct. 2161 ,76 L.Ed.2d 277 (1983); Bell v. City of Milwaukee,746 F.2d 1205 , 1261 (7th Cir.1984). A corollary of this right is that efforts by state actors to impede an individual’s access to courts or administrative agencies may provide thе basis for a constitutional claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Judicial access must be “adequate, effective, and meaningful,” Bounds v. Smith,430 U.S. 817 , 822,97 S.Ct. 1491 ,52 L.Ed.2d 72 (1977), and therefore, when police officers conceal or obscure important facts about a crime from its victims rendering hollow the right to seek redress, constitutional rights are undoubtedly abridged. Bell,746 F.2d at 1261 ; see also Stone v. City of Chicago,738 F.2d 896 (7th Cir.1984); Ryland v. Shapiro, 708 F.2d 967 (5th Cir.1983).
The more difficult question is whether it was clear at the time the officers acted — in July 1995 — that this type of police misconduct amounted to a constitutional violation, rаther than a simple state tort action of some kind. For a right to be “clearly established” in this sense, “[t]he contours of the right must be' sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would, understand that what he is doing violates that right. This is not to say that an official action is protеcted by qualified immunity unless the very action in question has previously been held unlawful, ... but it is to say that in light of preexisting law the unlawfulness must be apparent.”
Anderson v. Creighton,
*433 Both Ryland and Bell involved outright concealment of a claim, not destruction of evidence that would help to support a claim. In Ryland, the court held that two state prosecutors violated plaintiffs’ right of access to the courts by intentionally hiding and falsifying evidence that a third prosecutor had killed the plaintiffs’ daughter. Bell was similar: there this court held that a claim had been stated about right of access to thе courts when plaintiffs alleged that city police officers had conspired to cover up the killing of plaintiffs’ relative by a fellow police officer.
Ryland and Bell therefore would put a reasonable police officer on notice that she could not take steps to conceal the very commission of a crime and thus utterly bar the victim from seeking redress in the courts. What happened here, however, was short of such a total denial of access. Instead, taking the Harrells at their word, the defendants intentionally made it more difficult for them to pursue their theft case against the contractor by destroying a key piece of evidence. The Harrells knew the identity of the likely perpetrator before the police did. They allege that the cooler might have provided unambiguous proof of the perpetrator, if fingerprints had been found, but they do not and could not allege that the cooler was the only evidence of the crime. They had information about the amount of money in the cooler and knowledge about the sequеnce of events that occurred and the contractor’s access to the cooler. Furthermore, the notion that the cooler was the sine qua non of their case is speculative, at best. Fingerprints are not always easy to lift, and it is possible investigators would havе found nothing. In sum, we find that it is not clear enough that the Ryland/Bell approach would be extended to this kind of case, even taking the facts as favorably as we can to the Har-rells, to warrant a denial of qualified immunity for these police officers.
We therefore Reverse the judgment of the district court and hold that the defendant police officers were entitled to qualified immunity from suit.