State action doctrine

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Part of the series on

U.S. Discrimination Law

Standards of Review

Rational basis review Intermediate scrutiny Strict scrutiny

Other Legal Theories

Substantive due process State action doctrine

Defining Moments in Law

The 14th Amendment Plessy v. Ferguson Brown v. Board of Education Loving v. Virginia U.S. v. Virginia Romer v. Evans Lawrence v. Texas

Modalities of Constitutional Law

Textualism • Originalism • Dynamism

Issues in Constitutional Law

Same-sex marriage Gay rights Civil rights

State action doctrine is the American legal concept that the protections of the Constitution - such as the Fourteenth and First Amendments - only apply with any real strength to the coercive power of the state against the individual, rather than the coercive power of the individual against the individual.

Thus, private discrimination is not actionable under the Fourteenth Amendment: in the absence of federal and state statutory law to the contrary, private restaurants in America could serve only African American clientèle, or only white clientèle, and not run afoul of any Constitutional provision whatsoever. This limitation - a holdover from American law during the Reconstruction following the Civil War - has survived for nearly 150 years, and shows no sign of being weakened significantly.^[1]

Similarly, the first amendment does not generally protect speech from being curtailed by a private institution of which the speaker is a member. By way of example, an American citizen could not be criminally prosecuted, or statutorily barred, from making non-threatening racist statements. However, the same citizen could legally be terminated from his profession for the same.

[edit] Footnotes

1. ↑ The Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3, for weakening of the state action doctrine, see e.g. Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (holding that judicial enforcement of a racially restrictive covenant qualifies as significant state action, which must be struck down therein).