state action
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 334 U.S. 1 - Shelley v. Kraemer · 1948Most cited · 3,965 citing opinions
State action, as that phrase is understood for the purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment, refers to exertions of state power in all forms.
How the Supreme Court has restated “state action”
Each Supreme Court definition of “state action,” sized by how often later courts cited it. “Change” is measured by wording overlap with earlier definitions — a rough signal, not a semantic judgment.
How often courts cite the cases defining “state action”
Court decisions citing the 11 opinions that defined “state action” — 19,051 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining cases as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.
All 11 definitions, chronological · 1907–1972
- ORIGINAL
Whoever, by virtue of public position under a state government, deprives another of any right protected by that amendment against deprivation by the state, violates the constitutional inhibition; and as he acts in the name of the state and for the state, and is clothed with the state's powers, his act is that of the state.
taxing body
When a state official, acting under color of state authority, invades, in the course of his duties, a private right secured by the Federal Constitution, that right is violated, even if the state officer not only exceeded his authority but disregarded special commands of the state law.
Fourteenth Amendment
when those agencies are invested with an authority independent of the will of the association in whose name they undertake to speak, they become to that extent the organs of the state itself, the repositories of official power. They are then the governmental instruments whereby parties are organized and regulated to the end that government itself may be established or continued. . . . The test is whether they are to be classified as representatives of the state to such an extent and in such a sense that the great restraints of the Constitution set limits to their action.
the action of prosecuting officers on behalf of the state, like that of administrative officers in the execution of its laws, may constitute state action within the purview of the Fourteenth Amendment. That amendment governs any action of a state, 'whether through its legislature, through its courts, or through its executive or administrative officers.
The state in adopting and enforcing the prorate program made no contract or agreement and entered into no conspiracy in restraint of trade or to establish monopoly but, as sovereign, imposed the restraint as an act of government which the Sherman Act did not undertake to prohibit.
Sherman Act immunity · construing 15 U.S.C. § 1 · Sherman Antitrust Act
If the state requires a certain electoral procedure, prescribes a general election ballot made up of party nominees so chosen and limits the choice of the electorate in general elections for state offices, practically speaking, to those whose names appear on such a ballot, it endorses, adopts and enforces the discrimination against Negroes, practiced by a party entrusted by Texas law with the determination of the qualifications of participants in the primary. This is state action within the meaning of the Fifteenth Amendment.
A State, or a city, may act as authoritatively through its executive as through its legislative body.
If an individual is possessed of state authority and purports to act under that authority, his action is state action. It is irrelevant that he might have taken the same action had he acted in a purely private capacity or that the particular action which he took was not authorized by state law.
Conduct that is formally 'private' may become so entwined with governmental policies or so impregnated with a governmental character as to become subject to the constitutional limitations placed upon state action.
the essential dichotomy between discriminatory action by the State, which is prohibited by the Equal Protection Clause, and private conduct, 'however discriminatory or wrongful,' against which that clause 'erects no shield' . . . where the impetus for the discrimination is private, the State must have 'significantly involved itself with invidious discriminations' in order for the discriminatory action to fall within the ambit of the constitutional prohibition