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12  MANHATTAN COMMUNITY ACCESS CORP. v. HALLECK 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

responsibilities  to  a  private  entity,  that  entity—in  agree-
ing to take on the job—becomes a state actor for purposes 
of §1983.8  
  Not  all  acts  of  governmental  delegation  necessarily 
trigger  constitutional  obligations,  but  this  one  did.    New 
York State regulations required the City to secure public-
access  channels  if  it  awarded  a  cable  franchise.    16  N. Y. 
Codes,  Rules  &  Regs.  §895.4(b)(1).    The  City  did  award  a 
cable franchise.  The State’s regulations then required the 
City to make the channels it obtained available on a “first-
come, first-served, nondiscriminatory basis.”9  §895.4(c)(4).  

—————— 

8 Governments  are,  of  course,  not  constitutionally  required  to  open 
prisons  or  public  forums,  but  once  they  do  either  of  these  things, 
constitutional obligations attach.  The rule that a government may not 
evade  the  Constitution  by  substituting a  private administrator,  mean-
while, is not a prison-specific rule.  More than 50 years ago, for exam-
ple,  this  Court  made  clear  in  Evans  v.  Newton,  382  U. S.  296  (1966), 
that  the  city  of  Macon,  Georgia,  could  not  evade  the  Fourteenth 
Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause by handing off control of a park 
to  a  group  “of  ‘private’  trustees.”    Id.,  at  301.    Rather,  “the  public 
character of [the] park require[d] that it be treated as a public institu-
tion subject to the command of the Fourteenth Amendment, regardless 
of who ha[d] title under state law.”  Id., at 302. 

9 Accordingly,  this  is  not  a  case  in  which  a  private  entity  has  been 
asked  to  exercise  standardless  discretion.    See,  e.g.,  American  Mfrs. 
Mut. Ins. Co. v. Sullivan, 526 U. S. 40, 52 (1999).  Had New York law 
left MNN free to choose its favorite submissions, for example, a differ-
ent result might well follow. 

MNN has suggested to this Court that its contract with Time Warner 
allows  it  “to  curate  content,  to  decide  to  put  shows  together  on  one  of 
our channels or a different channel.”  Tr. of Oral Arg. 6; see Reply Brief 
9.  But MNN’s contract cannot defeat New York law’s “first-come, first-
served,  nondiscriminatory”  scheduling  requirement,  16  N. Y.  Codes, 
Rules & Regs. §895.4(c)(4), and the discretion MNN asserts seems to be 
at  most  some  limited  authority  to  coordinate  the  exact  placement  and 
timing of the content it is obliged to accept indiscriminately, see Tr. of 
Oral Arg. 25–26.  That seems akin to the authority to make reasonable 
time,  place,  and  manner  provisions,  which  is  consistent with  adminis-
tering any public forum.  See Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 491 U. S. 
781, 791 (1989).  As for any factual assertions about how the channels