Opinion ID: 108153
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: three additional points

Text: For purposes of remand, we consider it appropriate to make three additional points. First, the District Court's pretrial opinion seems to suggest that the exclusive means available to petitioner for demonstrating that state enforcement of the custom relevant here would be by showing that the State used its criminal trespass statute for this purpose. We disagree with the District Court's implicit assumption that a custom can have the force of law only if it is enforced by a state statute. [41] Any such limitation is too restrictive, for a state official might act to give a custom the force of law in a variety of ways, at least two examples of which are suggested by the record here. For one thing, petitioner may be able to show that the police subjected her to false arrest for vagrancy for the purpose of harassing and punishing her for attempting to eat with black people. [42] Alternatively, it might be shown on remand that the Hattiesburg police would intentionally tolerate violence or threats of violence directed toward those who violated the practice of segregating the races at restaurants. [43] Second, we think the District Court was wrong in ruling that the only proof relevant to showing a custom in this case was that demonstrating a specific practice of not serving white persons who were in the company of black persons in public restaurants. As Judge Waterman pointed out in his dissent below, petitioner could not possibly prove a long and unvarying habit of serving only the black persons in a mixed party of whites and blacks for the simple reason that it was only after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 became law that Afro-Americans had an opportunity to be served in Mississippi `white' restaurants at all, 409 F. 2d, at 128. Like Judge Waterman we think the District Court viewed the matter too narrowly, for under petitioner's complaint the relevant inquiry is whether at the time of the episode in question there was a longstanding and still prevailing state-enforced custom of segregating the races in public eating places. Such a custom, of course, would perforce encompass the particular kind of refusal to serve challenged in this case. Third, both the District Court and the majority opinion in the Court of Appeals suggested that petitioner would have to show that the relevant custom existed throughout the State, and that proof that it had the force of law in Hattiesburga political subdivision of the Statewas insufficient. This too we think was error. In the same way that a law whose source is a town ordinance can offend the Fourteenth Amendment even though it has less than state-wide application, so too can a custom with the force of law in a political subdivision of a State offend the Fourteenth Amendment even though it lacks state-wide application. In summary, if petitioner can show (1) the existence of a state-enforced custom of segregating the races in public eating places in Hattiesburg at the time of the incident in question; and (2) that Kress' refusal to serve her was motivated by that state-enforced custom, she will have made out a claim under § 1983. [44] For the foregoing reasons we think petitioner is entitled to a new trial on the substantive count of her complaint. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded to that court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL took no part in the decision of this case.