Opinion ID: 108153
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: custom or usage

Text: We are first confronted with the issue of whether a custom for purposes of § 1983 must have the force of law, or whether, as argued in dissent, no state involvement is required. Although this Court has never explicitly decided this question, we do not interpret the statute against an amorphous backdrop. What is now 42 U. S. C. § 1983 came into existence as § 1 of the Ku Klux Klan Act of April 20, 1871, 17 Stat. 13. The Chairman of the House Select Committee which drafted this legislation described [24] § 1 as modeled after § 2 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866a criminal provision that also contained language that forbade certain acts by any person under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, 14 Stat. 27. In the Civil Rights Cases, 109 U. S. 3, 16 (1883), the Court said of this 1866 statute: This law is clearly corrective in its character, intended to counteract and furnish redress against State laws and proceedings, and customs having the force of law, which sanction the wrongful acts specified. (Emphasis added.) Moreover, after an exhaustive examination of the legislative history of the 1866 Act, both the majority and dissenting opinions [25] in Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., 392 U. S. 409 (1968), concluded that § 2 of the 1866 Civil Rights Act was intended to be limited to deprivations perpetrated `under color of law. '  [26] (Emphasis added.) Quite apart from this Court's construction of the identical under color of provision of § 2 of the 1866 Act, the legislative history of § 1 of the 1871 Act, the lineal ancestor of § 1983, also indicates that the provision in question here was intended to encompass only conduct supported by state action. That such a limitation was intended for § 1 can be seen from an examination of the statements and actions of both the supporters and opponents of the Ku Klux Klan Act. In first reporting the Committee's recommendations to the House, Representative Shellabarger, the Chairman of the House Select Committee which drafted the Ku Klux Klan Act, said that § 1 was  in its terms carefully confined to giving a civil action for such wrongs against citizenship as are done under color of State laws which abridge these rights. [27] (Emphasis added.) Senator Edmunds, Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, and also a supporter of the bill, said of this provision: The first section is one that I believe nobody objects to, as defining the rights secured by the Constitution of the United States when they are assailed by any State law or under color of any State law, and it is merely carrying out the principles of the civil rights bill, which have since become a part of the Constitution. [28] (Emphasis added.) Thus, in each House, the leader of those favoring the bill expressly stated his understanding that § 1 was limited to deprivations of rights done under color of law. That Congress intended to limit the scope of § 1 to actions taken under color of law is further seen by contrasting its legislative history with that of other sections of the same Act. On the one hand, there was comparatively little debate over § 1 of the Ku Klux Klan Act, and it was eventually enacted in form identical to that in which it was introduced in the House. [29] Its history thus stands in sharp contrast to that of other sections of the Act. [30] For example, § 2 of the 1871 Act, [31] a provision aimed at private conspiracies with no under color of law requirement, created a great storm of controversy, in part because it was thought to encompass private conduct. Senator Thurman, for example, one of the leaders of the opposition to the Act, although objecting to § 1 on other grounds, admitted its constitutionality [32] and characterized it as refer[ring] to a deprivation under color of law, either statute law or `custom or usage' which has become common law.  [33] (Emphasis added.) This same Senator insisted vociferously on the absence of congressional power under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to penalize a conspiracy of private individuals to violate state law. [34] The comparative lack of controversy concerning § 1, in the context of the heated debate over the other provisions, suggests that the opponents of the Act, with minor exceptions, like its proponents understood § 1 to be limited to conduct under color of law. In addition to the legislative history, there exists an unbroken line of decisions, extending back many years, in which this Court has declared that action under color of law  is a predicate for a cause of action under § 1983, [35] or its criminal counterpart, 18 U. S. C. § 242. [36] Moreover, with the possible exception of an exceedingly opaque district court opinion, [37] every lower court opinion of which we are aware that has considered the issue, has concluded that a custom or usage for purposes of § 1983 requires state involvement and is not simply a practice that reflects longstanding social habits, generally observed by the people in a locality. [38] Finally, the language of the statute itself points in the same direction for it expressly requires that the custom or usage be that of any State,  not simply of the people living in a state. In sum, against this background, we think it clear that a custom, or usage, of [a] State for purposes of § 1983 must have the force of law by virtue of the persistent practices of state officials. Congress included customs and usages within its definition of law in § 1983 because of the persistent and widespread discriminatory practices of state officials in some areas of the post-bellum South. As Representative Garfield said: [E]ven where the laws are just and equal on their face, yet, by a systematic maladministration of them, or a neglect or refusal to enforce their provisions, a portion of the people are denied equal protection under them. [39] Although not authorized by written law, such practices of state officials could well be so permanent and well settled as to constitute a custom or usage with the force of law. This interpretation of custom recognizes that settled practices of state officials may, by imposing sanctions or withholding benefits, transform private predilections into compulsory rules of behavior no less than legislative pronouncements. If authority be needed for this truism, it can be found in Nashville, C. & St. L. R. Co. v. Browning, 310 U. S. 362 (1940), where the Court held that although a statutory provision suggested a different note, the law in Tennessee as established by longstanding practice of state officials was that railroads and public utilities were taxed at full cash value. What Justice Frankfurter wrote there seems equally apt here: It would be a narrow conception of jurisprudence to confine the notion of `laws' to what is found written on the statute books, and to disregard the gloss which life has written upon it. Settled state practice . . . can establish what is state law. The Equal Protection Clause did not write an empty formalism into the Constitution. Deeply embedded traditional ways of carrying out state policy, such as those of which petitioner complains, are often tougher and truer law than the dead words of the written text. Id., at 369. And in circumstances more closely analogous to the case at hand, the statements of the chief of police and mayor of New Orleans, as interpreted by the Court in Lombard v. Louisiana, 373 U. S. 267 (1963), could well have been taken by restaurant proprietors as articulating a custom having the force of law. Cf. Garner v. Louisiana, 368 U. S. 157, 176-185 (DOUGLAS, J., concurring) (1961); Wright v. Georgia, 373 U. S. 284 (1963); Baldwin v. Morgan, 287 F. 2d 750, 754 (C. A. 5th Cir. 1961).