Court Opinion

ID: 9427614
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:21:21.30877+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:08.447683
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Stevens,
concurring.
While I join the Court’s opinion, including its reliance on Brown v. GSA, 425 U. S. 820, and while I agree with much of Mr. Justice Powell’s concurrence, I add a few words of my own to explain why I would reach the same conclusion even if the Court had agreed with my dissenting views in Brown.
Sections 1983 and 1985 (3) of Title 42 of the United States Code (1976 ed., and Supp. II) are the surviving direct descendants of §§ 1 and 2 of the Civil Rights Act of 1871. 17 Stat. 13. Neither of these sections created any substantive rights. Earlier this Term we squarely held that § 1983 *382merely provides a remedy for certain violations of certain federal rights,1 and today the Court unequivocally holds that § 1985 (3) “provides no substantive rights itself; it merely provides a remedy for violation of the rights it designates.” Ante, at 372.2
Somewhat different language was used by Congress in describing the substantive rights encompassed within the two provisions: § 1 of the 1871 Act, the predecessor to § 1983, referred to “rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution of the United States,” whereas § 2, the predecessor to § 1985 (3), referred to “equal protection of the laws” and “equal privileges and immunities under the laws.” 3 The *383import of the language, however, as well as the relevant legislative history, suggests that the Congress which enacted both provisions was concerned with providing federal remedies for deprivations of rights protected by the Constitution and, in particular, the newly ratified Fourteenth Amendment. If a violation was effected “under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage of any State,” § 1983 afforded redress; if a violation was caused by private persons who “conspire or go in disguise on the highway,” § 1985 (3) afforded redress. Thus, the former authorized a remedy for state action depriving an individual of his constitutional rights, the latter for private action.
Some privileges and immunities of citizenship, such as the right to engage in interstate travel and the right to be free of the badges of slavery, are protected by the Constitution against interference by private action, as well as impairment by state action. Private conspiracies to deprive individuals of these rights are, as this Court held in Griffin v. Breckenridge, 403 U. S. 88, actionable under § 1985 (3) without regard to any state involvement.4
*384Other privileges and immunities of citizenship such as the right to due process of law and the right to the equal protection of the laws are protected by the Constitution only against state action. Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U. S. 1, 13. If a state agency arbitrarily refuses to serve a class of persons — Chinese-Americans, for example, see Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U. S. 356 — it violates the Fourteenth Amendment. Or if private persons take conspiratorial action that prevents or hinders the constituted authorities of any State from giving or securing equal treatment, the private persons would cause those authorities to violate the Fourteenth Amendment; the private persons would then have violated § 1985 (3).5
If, however, private persons engage in purely private acts of discrimination — for example, if they discriminate against women or against lawyers with a criminal practice, see Dombrowski v. Dowling, 459 F. 2d 190, 194-196 — they do not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.6 The rights secured by the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment are rights to protection against unequal or unfair treatment by the State, not by private parties. Thus, while § 1985 (3) does not require that a defendant act under color of state law, there still *385can be no claim for relief based on a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment if there has been no involvement by the State. The requirement of state action, in this context, is no more than a requirement that there be a constitutional violation.'
Here, there is no claim of such a violation. Private discrimination on the basis of sex is not prohibited by the Constitution. The right to be free of sex discrimination by other private parties is a statutory right that was created almost a century after § 1985 (3) was enacted. Because I do not believe that statute was intended to provide a remedy for the violation of statutory rights — let alone rights created by statutes that had not yet been enacted — I agree with the Court’s conclusion that it does not provide respondent with redress for injuries caused by private conspiracies to discriminate on the basis of sex.7
With this additional explanation of my views, I join the Court’s opinion.

 “Standing alone, § 1983 clearly provides no protection for civil rights since, as we have just concluded, § 1983 does not provide any substantive rights at all.” Chapman v. Houston Welfare Bights Org., 441 U. S. 600, 618.
In that opinion we quoted Senator Edmunds’ comment in the 1871 debate:
“All civil suits, as every lawyer understands, which this act authorizes, are not based upon it; they are based upon the right of the citizen. The act only gives a remedy.” Cong. Globe, 42d Cong., 1st Sess., 668 (1871).

 And ante, at 376, the Court states:
“Section 1985 (3), by contrast, creates no rights. It is a purely remedial statute, providing a civil cause of action when some otherwise defined federal right — to equal protection of the laws or equal privileges and immunities under the laws — is breached by a conspiracy in the manner defined by the section.”

 In its present form, 42 U. S. C. § 1983 refers to deprivations of “rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws.” The “and laws” language was not included in the original statute enacted in 1871, however; it was added in 1874 when Congress enacted the Revised Statutes of the United States. Rev. Stat. § 1979. No similar change was ever made in §2 of the 1871 Act, the predecessor to § 1985 (3). As originally introduced, that section did provide for criminal and civil actions for deprivations of “rights, privileges, or immunities . . . under the Constitution and laws of the United States.” Cong. Globe, 42d Cong., 1st Sess., App. 68 (1871) (emphasis added). “The enormous sweep of the *383original language led to pressures for amendment,” Griffin v. Breckenridge, 403 U. S. 88, 100, and the present language was substituted. The criminal provisions of § 2 were later declared unconstitutional, United States v. Harris, 106 U. S. 629, and repealed by Congress. 35 Stat. 1088, 1154. This criminal provision should be distinguished from 18 U. S. C. §241, relied upon by Mr. Justice White, see post, at 389 n. 5. Section 241 has, since its enactment in 1870, referred explicitly to “the Constitution or laws of the United States.” See 16 Stat. 141 (emphasis added).

 In Griffin, supra, at 105, the Court quoted the statement from the Civil Rights Cases, 109 U. S. 3, 20, that the Thirteenth Amendment “is not a mere prohibition of State laws establishing or upholding slavery, but an absolute declaration that slavery or involuntary servitude shall not exist in any part of the United States.” The opinion added:
“We can only conclude that Congress was wholly within its powers under § 2 of the Thirteenth Amendment in creating a statutory cause of action for Negro citizens who have been the victims of conspiratorial, racially *384discriminatory private action aimed at depriving them of the basic rights that the law secures to all free men.” 403 U. S., at 105.
With respect to the right of interstate travel, the opinion added:
“Our cases have firmly established that the right of interstate travel is constitutionally protected, does not necessarily rest on the Fourteenth Amendment, and is assertible against private as well as governmental interference.” Ibid.

 I have paraphrased the statutory language “preventing or hindering the constituted authorities of any State or Territory from giving or securing to all persons within such State or Territory the equal protection of the laws” because that language sheds important light on the meaning of the entire section.

 As the Court stated in Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U. S. 1, 13, the Fourteenth Amendment “erects no shield against merely private conduct, however discriminatory or wrongful.”

 Unlike the problem presented by Runyon v. McCrary, 427 U. S. 160, where I concluded that it was my duty to follow decisions of this Court which in my judgment had erroneously construed the actual intent of Congress, this is a case in which I am free to respect my understanding of congressional intent. To do so does not require me to advocate overruling any prior decisions of this Court in favor of a position which would appear to be “a significant step backwards . . . clearly contrary to my understanding of the mores of today.” Id., at 191-192 (SteveNS, J., concurring). And with respect to the issue which is presented in this case, there is no doubt in my mind that the construction of the statute adopted by the Court of Appeals “would have amazed the legislators who voted for it.” Id., at 89.