Opinion ID: 196780
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Nexus Analysis

Text: 19 As both parties acknowledge, the challenged action of the regulated entity ... may be fairly treated as that of the State itself ... only when it can be said that the State is responsible for the specific conduct of which the plaintiff complains. Blum v. Yaretsky, 457 U.S. 991, 1004, 102 S.Ct. 2777, 2786, 73 L.Ed.2d 534 (1982), cited in Rodriguez-Garcia, 904 F.2d at 97. The test is whether the government exercised coercive power or provided such significant encouragement that the complained-of misconduct surrounding the Assembly and the Board elections must be deemed to be the conduct of the government. Id., 904 F.2d at 90. 20 We emphasize that our examination focuses on the government's connection to the complained-of action, not the government's connection to the AEELA itself. See Blum, 457 U.S. at 1004, 102 S.Ct. at 2785-86. As a result, we find extraneous Plaintiffs' arguments highlighting the facts that the AEELA was created by law, that its members and Directors are public employees, and that the elective process is regulated by law, except to the degree that these facts demonstrate government coercion or encouragement of the complained-of conduct. 21 Plaintiffs contend that Defendants derived their authority to schedule the Assembly and election from a Puerto Rico law, 3 L.P.R.A. § 862(d), and that Defendants were government employees who performed their duties during working time and using government equipment and materials. However, Plaintiffs have hung their claim on the proposition that state-granted authority suffices to find state action, since they have failed to allege that the government coerced or encouraged the specific election rigging that gives rise to their complaint. We believe that the state's grant of authority alone cannot justify a conclusion of state action in this case. 22 We draw this conclusion by comparing two of our previous cases. First, like the district court, we are persuaded by our holding in Rockwell, 26 F.3d at 258, that state-granted authority making possible a private party's actions does not, without more, sufficiently show that the specific action taken under that authority constitutes state action. Id. In Rockwell, we concluded that the fact that a Massachusetts statute authorized public health professionals to hospitalize persons believed to present a likelihood of serious harm by reason of mental illness, did not suffice to create a sufficient link between the state and the plaintiff's own detention to classify the hospital as a state actor. Id. By contrast, in Rodriques v. Furtado, 950 F.2d 805, 814 (1st Cir.1991), we held that a physician functioned as a state actor where he performed a body cavity search of the plaintiff pursuant to a search warrant. We justified our conclusion on the ground that the scope and motivation for the specific conduct occasioning the complaint were established solely by the state's investigatory goals and justified solely by the search warrant. Id. at 814. 23 We conclude that to the extent that state-granted authority can justify a finding of state action, that authority must be connected to the aim of encouraging or compelling the specific complained-of conduct. Because we conclude that the district court correctly found that no state-linked financial or regulatory nexus compelled Defendants to act as they did, we find no state action under the nexus test.