Source: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0424_0693_ZD.html
Timestamp: 2013-05-18 17:38:14
Document Index: 632346933

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 1983', '§ 1983', '§ 1983', '§ 1983', '§ 1983', '§ 1983', '§ 1983', '§ 1983']

No. 74-891 Argued: November 4, 1975 --- Decided: March 23, 1976
Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within [p715] the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress.
Thus, as the Court indicates, ante at 696-697, respondent's complaint, to be cognizable under § 1983, must allege both a deprivation of a constitutional right [n1] and the effectuation of that deprivation under color of law. See, e.g., Adickes v. Kress & Co., 398 U.S. 144, 150 (1970). But the implication, see ante at 697-699, that the existence vel non of a state remedy -- for example, a cause of action for defamation -- is relevant to the determination whether there is a cause of action under § 1983, is wholly unfounded.
Ante at 698. The action complained of here is "state [p716] action" allegedly in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, and that Amendment, which is only designed to prohibit "state" action, clearly renders unconstitutional actions taken by state officials that would merely be criminal or tortious if engaged in by those acting in their private capacities. Of course, if a private citizen enters the home of another, manacles and threatens the owner, and searches the house in the course of a robbery, he would be criminally and civilly liable under state law, but no constitutional rights of the owner would be implicated. However, if state police officials engage in the same acts in the course of a narcotics investigation, the owner may maintain a damages action against the police under § 1983 for deprivation of constitutional rights "under color of" state law. Cf. Bivens v. Six Unknown Federal Narcotics Agents, 403 U.S. 388, 390-392 (1971). See also, e.g., Monroe v. Pape, supra. In short, it is difficult to believe that the Court seriously suggests, see ante at 697-698, that there is some anomaly in the distinction, for constitutional purposes, between tortious conduct committed by a private citizen and the same conduct committed by state officials under color of state law.
It may be that I misunderstand the thrust of Part I of the Court's opinion. Perhaps the Court is not questioning the involvement of a constitutional "liberty" or "property" interest in this case, but rather whether the deprivation of those interests was accomplished "under color of" state law. The Court's expressed concern that, but for today's decision, negligent tortious behavior by state officials might constitute a § 1983 violation, see ante at 698, suggests this reading. [n2] But that concern is [p717] groundless. An official's actions are not "under color of" law merely because he is an official; an off-duty policeman's discipline of his own children, for example, would not constitute conduct "under color of" law. The essential element of this type of § 1983 action [n3] is abuse of his official position.
United States v. Classic, 313 U.S. 299, 326 (1941) (emphasis supplied). Moreover, whether or not mere negligent official conduct in the course of duty can ever constitute such abuse of power, the police officials here concede that their conduct was intentional, and was undertaken in their official capacities. Therefore, beyond peradventure, it is action taken under color of law, see ante at 697, and n. 2, and it is disingenuous for the Court to argue, see ante at 700-701, that respondent is seeking to convert § 1983 into a generalized font of tort law. The only issue properly presented by this case is whether petitioners' intentional conduct infringed any of respondent's "liberty" or "property" interests without due process of law, and that is the question to be addressed. I am [p718] persuaded that respondent has alleged a case of such infringement, and therefore of a violation of § 1983. The stark fact is that the police here have officially imposed on respondent the stigmatizing label "criminal" without the salutary and constitutionally mandated safeguards of a criminal trial. The Court concedes that this action will have deleterious consequences for respondent. For 15 years, the police had prepared and circulated similar lists, not with respect to shoplifting alone, but also for other offenses. App. 19, 27-28. Included in the five-page list in which respondent's name and "mug shot" appeared were numerous individuals who, like respondent, were never convicted of any criminal activity and whose only "offense" was having once been arrested. [n4] [p719] Indeed, respondent was arrested over 17 months before the flyer was distributed, [n5] not by state law enforcement authorities, but by a store's private security police, and nothing in the record appears to suggest the existence at that time of even constitutionally sufficient probable cause for that single arrest on a shoplifting charge. [n6] Nevertheless, petitioners had 1,000 flyers printed (800 were distributed widely throughout the Louisville business community) proclaiming that the individuals identified [p720] by name and picture were "subjects known to be active in this criminal field [shoplifting]," and trumpeting the "fact" that each page depicted "Active Shoplifters" (emphasis supplied). [n7]
It is important, to paraphrase the Court, that "[w]e, too, [should] pause to consider the result should [the Court's] interpretation of § 1983 and of the Fourteenth Amendment be accepted." Ante at 698. There is no attempt by the Court to analyze the question as one of reconciliation of constitutionally protected personal rights and the exigencies of law enforcement. No effort is made to distinguish the "defamation" that occurs when a grand jury indicts an accused from the "defamation" that occurs when executive officials arbitrarily and without [p721] trial declare a person an "active criminal." [n8] Rather, the Court, by mere fiat and with no analysis, wholly excludes personal interest in reputation from the ambit of "life, liberty, or property" under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, thus rendering due process concerns never applicable to the official stigmatization, however arbitrary, of an individual. The logical and disturbing corollary of this holding is that no due process infirmities would inhere in a statute constituting a commission to conduct ex parte trials of individuals, so long as the only official judgment pronounced was limited to the public condemnation and branding of a person as a Communist, a traitor, an "active murderer," a homosexual, or any other mark that "merely" carries social opprobrium. The potential of today's decision is frightening for a free people. [n9] That decision surely finds no support in our relevant constitutional jurisprudence. [p722]
Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 399 (1923). [n10] Certainly the enjoyment of [p723] one's good name and reputation has been recognized repeatedly in our case as being among the most cherished of rights enjoyed by a free people, and therefore as falling within the concept of personal "liberty."
Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323, 341 (1974). [n11] [p724] We have consistently held that
It is also important in our free society that every individual going about his ordinary affairs have confidence that his government cannot adjudge him guilty of a criminal offense without convincing [p725] a proper factfinder of his guilt with utmost certainty.
Id. at 364. [n12]
[T]he personal and economic consequences alleged to flow from such actions are sufficient to meet the requirement that appellant prove a legally redressable injury. Those consequences would certainly be actionable if caused by a private party, and thus should be sufficient to accord appellant standing. See Greene v. McElroy, 360 U.S. 474, 493, n. 22 [p726] (1959); Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee v. McGrath, supra at 140-141 (opinion of Burton, J.); id. at 151-160 (Frankfurter, J., concurring). It is no answer that the Commission has not itself tried to impose any direct sanctions on appellant; it is enough that the Commission's alleged actions will have a substantial impact on him. . . . Appellant's allegations go beyond the normal publicity attending criminal prosecution; he alleges a concerted attempt publicly to brand him a criminal without a trial.
[There is] a constitutionally significant distinction between two kinds of governmental bodies. The first is an agency whose sole or predominant function, without serving any other public interest, is to expose and publicize the names of persons it finds guilty of wrongdoing. To the extent that such a determination -- whether called a "finding" or an "adjudication" [p727] -- finally and directly affects the substantial personal interests, I do not doubt that the Due Process Clause may require that it be accompanied by many of the traditional adjudicatory procedural safeguards. Cf. Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee v. McGrath, 341 U.S. 123 (1951).
The Court, however, relegates its discussion of Jenkins to a dissembling footnote. First, the Court ignores the fact that the Court in Jenkins clearly recognized a constitutional "liberty" or "property" interest in reputation sufficient to invoke the strictures of the Fourteenth Amendment. [n13] It baffles me how, in the face of that holding, the Court can come to today's conclusion by reliance on the fact that the conduct in question does not "come within the language" of the dissent in Jenkins, ante at 706 n. 4. Second, and more important, the Court's footnote manifests the same confusion that pervades the remainder of its opinion: it simply fails to recognize the crucial difference between the question whether there is a personal interest in one's good name and reputation that is constitutionally cognizable as a "liberty" or "property" interest within the Fourteenth and Fifth Amendment Due Process Clauses, and the totally separate question whether particular government [p728] action with respect to that interest satisfies the mandates of due process. See, e.g., supra at 720-721, and n. 8. Although the dissenters in Jenkins thought that the Commission's procedures complied with due process, they clearly believed that there was a personal interest that had to be weighed in reaching that conclusion. [n14] The dissenters in Jenkins, like the Court in Hannah v. Larche, supra, held the view that, in the context of a purely investigatory, factfinding agency, full trial safeguards are not required to comply with due process. But that question would never have been reached unless there were some constitutionally cognizable personal interest making the inquiry necessary -- the interest in reputation that is affected [p729] by public "exposure." The Court, by contrast, now implicitly repudiates a substantial body of case law and finds no such constitutionally cognizable interest in a person's reputation, thus foreclosing any inquiry into the procedural protections accorded that interest in a given situation.
Moreover, Wisconsin v. Constantineau, 400 U.S. 433 (1971), which was relied on by the Court of Appeals in this case, did not rely at all on the fact asserted by the [p730] Court today as controlling -- namely, upon the fact that "posting" denied Ms. Constantineau the right to purchase alcohol for a year, ante at 708-709. Rather, Constantineau stated:
Ibid., quoting Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Comm. v. McGrath, 341 U.S. 123, 168 (1951) (Frankfurter,J.,concurring) (emphasis supplied). There again, the fact that government stigmatization of an individual implicates constitutionally protected interests was made plain. [n15] [p731]
Thus, Jenkins and Constantineau, and the decisions upon which they relied, are cogent authority that a person's interest in his good name and reputation falls [p732] within the broad term "liberty" and clearly require that the government afford procedural protections before infringing that name and reputation by branding a person as a criminal. The Court is reduced to discrediting the clear thrust of Constantineau and Jenkins by excluding the interest in reputation from all constitutional protection "if there is any other possible interpretation" by which to deny their force as precedent according constitutional protection for the interest in reputation. [n16] Ante at 708. The Court's approach -- oblivious both to Mr. Chief Justice Marshall's admonition that "we must never forget, that it is a constitution we are expounding," M'Culloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 407 (1819), and to the teaching of cases such as Roth and Meyer, which were attentive to the necessary breadth of constitutional "liberty" and "property" interests, see nn. 10, 15, supra -- is to water down our prior precedents by reinterpreting [p733] them as confined to injury to reputation that affects an individual's employment prospects or, as "a right or status previously recognized by state law [that the State] distinctly altered or extinguished." Ante at 711. See also, e.g., ante at 701, 704-706, 709-710, 710-712. The obvious answer is that such references in those cases (when there even were such references) concerned the particular fact situations presented, and in nowise implied any limitation upon the application of the principles announced. E.g., ante at 709-710, quoting Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. at 573. See n. 15, supra. Discussions of impact upon future employment opportunities were nothing more than recognition of the logical and natural consequences flowing from the stigma condemned. E.g., ante at 705-706, quoting Cafeteria Workers v. McElroy, 367 U.S. at 898. [n17] [p734]
I have always thought that one of this Court's most important roles is to provide a formidable bulwark against governmental violation of the constitutional safeguards [p735] securing in our free society the legitimate expectations of every person to innate human dignity and sense of worth. It is a regrettable abdication of that role and a saddening denigration of our majestic Bill of Rights when the Court tolerates arbitrary and capricious official conduct branding an individual as a criminal without compliance with constitutional procedures designed to ensure the fair and impartial ascertainment of criminal culpability. Today's decision must surely be a short-lived aberration. [n18]
18. In light of my conviction that the State may not condemn an individual as a criminal without following the mandates of the trial process, I need not address the question whether there is an independent right of privacy which would yield the same result. Indeed, privacy notions appear to be inextricably interwoven with the considerations which require that a State not single an individual out for punishment outside the judicial process. Essentially, the core concept would be that a State cannot broadcast even such factual events as the occurrence of an arrest that does not culminate in a conviction when there are no legitimate law enforcement justifications for doing so, since the State is chargeable with the knowledge that many employers will treat an arrest the same as a conviction, and deny the individual employment or other opportunities on the basis of a fact that has no probative value with respect to actual criminal culpability. See, e.g., Michelson v. United States, 335 U.S. 469, 482 (1948); Schware v. Board of Bar Examiners, 353 U.S. at 241. A host of state and federal courts, relying on both privacy notions and the presumption of innocence, have begun to develop a line of cases holding that there are substantive limits on the power of the government to disseminate unresolved arrest records outside the law enforcement system, see, e.g., Utz v. Cullinane, 172 U.S.App.D.C. 67, 520 F.2d 467 (1975); Tarlton v. Saxbe, 165 U.S.App.D.C. 293, 507 F.2d 1116 (1974); United States v. Dooley, 364 F.Supp. 75 (ED Pa.1973); Menard v. Mitchell, 328 F.Supp. 718, 725-726 (DC 1971), rev'd on other grounds, 162 U.S.App.D.C. 284, 498 F.2d 1017 (1974); United States v. Kalish, 271 F.Supp. 968 (PR 1967); Davidson v. Dill, 180 Colo. 123, 503 P.2d 157 (1972); Eddy v. Moore, 5 Wash.App. 334, 487 P.2d 211 (1971). I fear that, after today's decision, these nascent doctrines will never have the opportunity for full growth and analysis. Since the Court of Appeals did not address respondent's privacy claims, and since there has not been substantial briefing or oral argument on that point, the Court's pronouncements are certainly unnecessary. Of course, States that are more sensitive than is this Court to the privacy and other interests of individuals erroneously caught up in the criminal justice system are certainly free to adopt or adhere to higher standards under state law. See, e.g., Michigan v. Mosley, 423 U.S. 96, 111, 120-121 (1975) (BRENNAN, J., dissenting).