Also known as: state action requirements · state-action requirement · state action · state action doctrine
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
A constitutional doctrine that limits the reach of the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment to actions fairly attributable to the state or federal government rather than to purely private conduct.
Seth Shapiro, a private defendant in a contract dispute with Skylar Sullivan, exercises peremptory challenges during judge-supervised jury selection to remove all Black members of the venire. The court enforces the strikes as part of the judicial process. The discriminatory exercise of the challenges is treated as state action subject to equal protection scrutiny.
Sophia Singh, a beneficiary of a common trust fund managed by a private bank, receives only newspaper notice of a judicial accounting proceeding. The court approves the accounts without direct notice to her. The judicial settlement process supplies the state action needed to trigger due process review of the notice adequacy.
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Samuel Soto, a public school student, refuses to salute the flag during a state-mandated ceremony. School officials, acting under a board of education policy, punish him for the refusal. The officials' enforcement of the policy constitutes state action that implicates First Amendment protections.
Sabrina Shah owns waterfront property condemned by the City of New London for transfer to a private developer under an economic redevelopment plan. The city council approves the taking and the court enforces it. The city's initiation and judicial enforcement of the condemnation supply the state action required for a takings claim.
Sean Steele's development company seeks rezoning for multifamily housing in a predominantly white village. Village officials deny the application after public opposition citing neighborhood character. The denial by local government officials constitutes state action subject to equal protection analysis for discriminatory purpose.
Skylar Sullivan, a physician, seeks to prescribe medication to a terminally ill patient under a state statute criminalizing assisted suicide. State prosecutors threaten enforcement of the ban. The statute and its threatened enforcement by state officials constitute state action that raises substantive due process questions.
Private conduct qualifies as state action when it is fairly attributable to the state, such as when private parties perform a traditional public function with significant state participation or when the state enforces private agreements through its courts.
Yes. Jury selection is a traditional public function performed with substantial court involvement, so a private litigant's racially discriminatory use of peremptory challenges in a civil case constitutes state action subject to equal protection limits.
The doctrine limits constitutional obligations to governmental conduct, leaving a sphere of private autonomy free from federal judicial oversight and respecting state authority over purely private disputes.
Yes. When a state court enforces a racially restrictive covenant that prevents property transfer to Black buyers, the enforcement itself supplies the requisite state action even though the covenant originated as a private agreement.
No. Extensive regulation or a monopoly position alone does not make a private actor a state actor unless the state participates directly in the specific challenged decision or delegates an exclusive public function.
…This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to…