Will v. Michigan Dept. of State Police | |
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Argued 5 December, 1988 Decided 15 June, 1989 | |
Full case name | Ray Will v. Michigan Department of State Police, et al. |
Citations | 491 U.S. 58 ( more ) 109 S. Ct. 2304; 105 L. Ed. 2d 45; 1989 U.S. LEXIS 2975; 57 U.S.L.W. 4677; 49 Fair Empl. Prac. Cas. (BNA) 1664; 50 Empl. Prac. Dec. (CCH) ¶ 39,067 |
Holding | |
Neither States nor state officials acting in their official capacities are "persons" within the meaning of 42 U.S.C. § 1983 when being sued for monetary damages. | |
Court membership | |
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Case opinions | |
Majority | White, joined by Rehnquist, O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy |
Dissent | Brennan, joined by Marshall, Blackmun, Stevens |
Dissent | Stevens |
Laws applied | |
U.S. Const. amend. XI, 42 U.S.C. § 1983 |
Will v. Michigan Dept. of State Police, 491 U.S. 58 (1989), was a case decided by the United States Supreme Court, in which the Court held that States and their officials acting in their official capacity are not persons when sued for monetary damages under the Civil Rights Act of 1871. [1]
Ray Will sued the Michigan State Police Department and the Director of the State Police in the Michigan Court of Claims alleging various violations of the Constitutions of the United States and Michigan as a claim under the Civil Rights Act of 1871, which had been codified into the United States Code at 42 U.S.C. § 1983. He claimed that he had been denied a promotion to a data systems analyst position in the police department because his brother had been a student activist and the subject of a "Red Squad" file maintained by the police. The Court of Claims, relying on a judgment in Will's favor by the Michigan Civil Service Commission, found that the police department and the director were "persons" within the meaning of 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and that the denial of the promotion was a violation of the Constitution of the United States.
The Code of Laws of the United States of America is the official compilation and codification of the general and permanent federal statutes of the United States. It contains 53 titles. The main edition is published every six years by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the House of Representatives, and cumulative supplements are published annually. The official version of those laws not codified in the United States Code can be found in United States Statutes at Large.
Student activism or campus activism is work by students to cause political, environmental, economic, or social change. Although often focused on schools, curriculum, and educational funding, student groups have influenced greater political events.
In the United States, Red Squads were police intelligence units that specialized in infiltrating, conducting counter-measures and gathering intelligence on political and social groups during the 20th century. Dating as far back as the Haymarket Riot in 1886, Red Squads became common in larger cities such as Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles during the First Red Scare of the 1920s. They were set up as specialized units of city police departments, as a weapon against labor unions, communists, anarchists, and other dissidents.
Section 1983 provides:
Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress. For the purposes of this section, any Act of Congress applicable exclusively to the District of Columbia shall be considered to be a statute of the District of Columbia.
On appeal, the Michigan Court of Appeals vacated the judgment against the Department of State Police, holding that a State is not a person under § 1983, but remanded the case for determination of the possible immunity of the Director of State Police from liability for damages. The Michigan Supreme Court granted discretionary review and affirmed the Court of Appeals in part and reversed in part. The Michigan Supreme Court agreed that the State itself is not a person under § 1983, but also held that a state official acting in an official capacity was not such a person. [2] The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari to hear the case. [3]
The Michigan Court of Appeals is the intermediate-level appellate court of the state of Michigan. It was created by the Michigan Constitution of 1963, and commenced operations in 1965. Its opinions are reported both in an official publication of the State of Michigan, Michigan Appeals Reports, as well as the unofficial, privately published North Western Reporter, published by West. Appeals from this court's decisions go to the Michigan Supreme Court.
The Michigan Supreme Court is the highest court in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is Michigan's court of last resort and consists of seven justices. The Court is located in the Michigan Hall of Justice at 925 Ottawa Street in Lansing, the state capital.
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In a 5-4 decision delivered by Justice White, the Court held that neither States nor state officials acting in their official capacities are "persons" within the meaning of 42 U.S.C. § 1983 when being sued for monetary damages. The Court found that § 1983 would not provide a federal forum for litigants who were seeking a remedy against a State for alleged deprivations of civil liberties because the Eleventh Amendment barred such suits unless the State has waived its sovereign immunity or unless Congress has exercised its power under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to override that immunity. [4] The majority found that even though state officials literally are persons, suits brought against them in their official capacity were not really suits against the officials, but were rather suits against the officials' offices, no different from a suit against the State itself. [5] This ruling came despite the fact that the Court had previously ruled that a state official acting in an official capacity, when sued for injunctive relief, would be a person under §1983 because "official-capacity actions for prospective relief are not treated as actions against the State." [6]
Byron Raymond "Whizzer" White was an American lawyer and professional American football player who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1962 to 1993. Born and raised in Colorado, he played college football, basketball, and baseball for the University of Colorado, finishing as the runner up for the Heisman Trophy in 1937. He was selected in the first round of the 1938 NFL Draft by the Pittsburgh Pirates and led the National Football League in rushing yards in his rookie season. White was admitted to Yale Law School in 1939 and played for the Detroit Lions in the 1940 and 1941 seasons. During World War II, he served as an intelligence officer with the United States Navy in the Pacific. After the war, he graduated from Yale and clerked for Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson.
The Eleventh Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed by Congress on March 4, 1794, and ratified by the states on February 7, 1795. The Eleventh Amendment restricts the ability of individuals to bring suit against states in federal court.
Sovereign immunity, or crown immunity, is a legal doctrine by which the sovereign or state cannot commit a legal wrong and is immune from civil suit or criminal prosecution, strictly speaking in modern texts in its own courts. A similar, stronger rule as regards foreign courts is named state immunity.
Justice Brennan wrote a dissent that was joined by Justice Marshall, Justice Blackmun and Justice Stevens. Brennan found that the Eleventh Amendment was inapplicable because Will had brought the case in State court and that in interpreting the word "person", the Court should take into account the "Dictionary Act", passed two months before § 1983, which said "[t]hat in all acts hereafter passed... the word 'person' may extend and be applied to bodies politic and corporate... unless the context shows that such words were intended to be used in a more limited sense..." [7] In a previous case, Monell v. New York City Dept. of Social Services (1978), the Court had held that it was mandatory that the definition of the word "person" be construed to include "bodies politic and corporate" unless the statute under consideration "by its terms called for a deviation from this practice. [8]
Thurgood Marshall was an American lawyer, serving as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from October 1967 until October 1991. Marshall was the Court's 96th justice and its first African-American justice. Prior to his judicial service, he successfully argued several cases before the Supreme Court, including Brown v. Board of Education.
In a separate dissent, Justice Stevens wrote: "The Court having constructed an edifice for the purposes of the Eleventh Amendment on the theory that the State is always the real party in interest in a § 1983 official-capacity action against a state officer, I would think the majority would be impelled to conclude that the State is a "person" under § 1983." [9] After agreeing with Justice Brennan's dissent, he wrote further,
the Court's construction draws an illogical distinction between wrongs committed by county or municipal officials on the one hand, and those committed by state officials, on the other. Finally, there is no necessity to import into this question of statutory construction doctrine created to protect the fiction that one sovereign cannot be sued in the courts of another sovereign. Aside from all of these reasons, the Court's holding that a State is not a person under § 1983 departs from a long line of judicial authority based on exactly that premise. [10]
Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), was a landmark case argued by the United States Supreme Court which held that the Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures is not violated when a police officer stops a suspect on the street and frisks him or her without probable cause to arrest, if the police officer has a reasonable suspicion that the person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime and has a reasonable belief that the person "may be armed and presently dangerous."
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Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651 (1974), was a United States Supreme Court case that held that the sovereign immunity recognized in the Eleventh Amendment prevented a federal court from ordering a state from paying back funds that had been unconstitutionally withheld from parties to whom they had been due.
Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida, 517 U.S. 44 (1996), was a United States Supreme Court case which held that Article One of the U.S. Constitution did not give the United States Congress the power to abrogate the sovereign immunity of the states that is further protected under the Eleventh Amendment. Such abrogation is permitted where it is necessary to enforce the rights of citizens guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment as per Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, 427 U.S. 445 (1976). The case also held that the doctrine of Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123 (1908), which allows state officials to be sued in their official capacity for prospective injunctive relief, was inapplicable under these circumstances, because any remedy was limited to the one that Congress had provided.
The Enforcement Act of 1871, also known as the Civil Rights Act of 1871, Force Act of 1871, Ku Klux Klan Act, Third Enforcement Act, or Third Ku Klux Klan Act, is an Act of the United States Congress which empowered the President to suspend the writ of habeas corpus to combat the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and other white supremacy organizations. The act was passed by the 42nd United States Congress and signed into law by the 18th President, Ulysses S. Grant on April 20, 1871. The act was the last of three Enforcement Acts passed by the United States Congress from 1870 to 1871 during the Reconstruction Era to combat attacks upon the suffrage rights of African Americans. The statute has been subject to only minor changes since then, but has been the subject of voluminous interpretation by courts.
Banco Nacional de Cuba v. Sabbatino, 376 U.S. 398 (1964), was a United States Supreme Court case that determined that the policy of United States federal courts would be to honor the Act of State Doctrine, which dictates that the propriety of decisions of other countries relating to their internal affairs would not be questioned in the courts of the United States.
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Kimel v. Florida Board of Regents, 528 U.S. 62 (2000), was a United States Supreme Court case that determined that the Congress's enforcement powers under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution did not extend to the abrogation of state sovereign immunity under the Eleventh Amendment where the discrimination complained of was rationally based on age.
Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167 (1961), was a United States Supreme Court case that considered the application of federal civil rights law to constitutional violations by city employees. The case was significant because it held that 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a statutory provision from 1871, could be used to sue state officers who violated a plaintiff's constitutional rights. § 1983 had previously been a relatively obscure and little-used statute, but since Monroe it has become a central part of United States civil rights law.
Monell v. Department of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658 (1978), is an opinion given by the United States Supreme Court in which the Court overruled Monroe v. Pape in holding that a local government is a "person" subject to suit under Section 1983 of Title 42 of the United States Code: Civil action for deprivation of rights. Additionally, the Court held that §1983 claims against municipal entities must be based on implementation of a policy or custom.
The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution addresses criminal procedure and other aspects of the Constitution. It was ratified in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights. The Fifth Amendment applies to every level of the government, including the federal, state, and local levels, as well as any corporation, private enterprise, group, or individual, or any foreign government in regard to a US citizen or resident of the US. The Supreme Court furthered the protections of this amendment through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
In United States law, the federal government as well as state and tribal governments generally enjoy sovereign immunity, also known as governmental immunity, from lawsuits. Local governments in most jurisdictions enjoy immunity from some forms of suit, particularly in tort. The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act provides foreign governments, including state-owned companies, with a related form of immunity—state immunity—that shields them from lawsuits except in relation to certain actions relating to commercial activity in the United States. The principle of sovereign immunity in US law was inherited from the English common law legal maxim rex non potest peccare, meaning "the king can do no wrong." In some situations, sovereign immunity may be waived by law.
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