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Page Number: 35

30 

ZIGLAR v. ABBASI 

Opinion of the Court 

Justice).  Second, the discussions were the preface to, and
the outline of, a general and far-reaching policy. 

As  to  the  fact  that  these  officers  were  in  the  same  De-
partment, an analogous principle discussed in the context 
of  antitrust  law  is  instructive.    The  Court’s  precedent
indicates that there is no unlawful conspiracy when offic-
ers  within  a  single  corporate  entity  consult  among  them-
selves and then adopt a policy for the entity.  See Copper-
weld  Corp  v.  Independence  Tube  Corp.,  467  U. S.  752, 
769–771 (1984).  Under this principle—sometimes called the 
intracorporate-conspiracy  doctrine—an  agreement  be-
tween or among agents of the same legal entity, when the 
agents  act  in  their  official  capacities,  is  not  an  unlawful
conspiracy.  Ibid.  The  rule  is  derived  from  the  nature  of 
the  conspiracy  prohibition. 
Conspiracy  requires  an 
agreement—and  in  particular  an  agreement  to  do  an 
unlawful  act—between  or  among  two  or  more  separate 
persons.  When two agents of the same legal entity make
an  agreement  in  the  course  of  their  official  duties,  how- 
ever, as a practical and legal matter their acts are attributed 
to  their  principal.    And  it  then  follows  that  there  has  not 
been an agreement between two or more separate people. 
See  id.,  at  771  (analogizing  to  “a  multiple  team  of  horses
drawing a vehicle under the control of a single driver”).

To be sure, this Court has not given its approval to this
doctrine  in  the  specific  context  of  §1985(3).  See  Great 
American,  442  U. S.,  at  372,  n.  11.  There  is  a  division  in 
the courts of appeals, moreover, respecting the validity or
correctness  of  the  intracorporate-conspiracy  doctrine  with 
reference  to  §1985  conspiracies.  See  Hull  v.  Shuck,  501 
U. S.  1261,  1261–1262  (1991)  (White,  J.,  dissenting  from
denial of certiorari) (discussing the Circuit split); Bowie v. 
Maddox, 642 F. 3d 1122, 1130–1131 (CADC 2011) (detail-
ing a longstanding split about whether the intracorporate-
conspiracy  doctrine  applies  to  civil  rights  conspiracies). 
Nothing  in  this  opinion  should  be  interpreted  as  either