State action doctrine

	We the People do ordain and establish this; US Constitution
	Standards of review
	Rational basis review; Intermediate scrutiny; Strict scrutiny;
	Other legal theories
	Substantive due process; State action doctrine;
	Amendments
	I - II - III - IV - V - XIV
	Defining moments in law
	Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission; Civil Rights Cases; Commerce Clause; Dred Scott v. Sandford; Epperson v. Arkansas;
	Interpretation
	Originalism; Purposive; Responsive; Textualism;
	Issues
	Civil rights; Bill of Rights; Gay rights; Commerce rights; Free speech; v - t - e

State action doctrine is the American legal concept that the protections of the Constitution — such as the Fourteenth and First Amendments — only apply with any real strength to the coercive power of the state against the individual, rather than the coercive power of the individual against the individual.

Thus, private discrimination is not actionable under the Fourteenth Amendment: in the absence of federal and state statutory law to the contrary, private restaurants in America could serve only African American clientèle, or only white clientèle, and not run afoul of any Constitutional provision whatsoever. This limitation — a holdover from American law during the Reconstruction following the Civil War — has survived for nearly 150 years, and shows no sign of being weakened significantly[1] (the Civil Rights Act of 1964 got around this by prohibiting racial discrimination under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution).

Similarly, the First Amendment does not generally protect speech from being curtailed by a private institution of which the speaker is a member. By way of example, an American citizen could not be criminally prosecuted, or statutorily barred, from making non-threatening racist statements. However, the same citizen could legally be terminated from his profession for the same. When they are employed by public institutions, however, the protections generally still apply.

References

The Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3, for weakening of the state action doctrine, see e.g. Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (holding that judicial enforcement of a racially restrictive covenant qualifies as significant state action, which must be struck down therein).

This law-related article is a stub.
You can help RationalWiki by expanding it.

This article is issued from Rationalwiki. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.

[1] The Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3, for weakening of the state action doctrine, see e.g. Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (holding that judicial enforcement of a racially restrictive covenant qualifies as significant state action, which must be struck down therein).