Will v. Michigan Department of State Police

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Will v. Michigan Dept. of State Police
Seal of the United States Supreme Court.svg
Argued 5 December, 1988
Decided 15 June, 1989
Full case nameRay Will v. Michigan Department of State Police, et al.
Citations491 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
Chief Justice
William Rehnquist
Associate Justices
William J. Brennan Jr.  · Byron White
Thurgood Marshall  · Harry Blackmun
John P. Stevens  · Sandra Day O'Connor
Antonin Scalia  · Anthony Kennedy
Case opinions
MajorityWhite, joined by Rehnquist, O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy
DissentBrennan, joined by Marshall, Blackmun, Stevens
DissentStevens
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]

Contents

Background information

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.

United States Code official compilation and codification of the United States federal laws

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 Work by students to cause political, environmental, economic, or social change

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]

Michigan Court of Appeals

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.

Michigan Supreme Court the highest court in the U.S. state of Michigan

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.

Discretionary review is the authority appellate courts have to decide which appeals they will consider from among the cases submitted to them. This offers the judiciary a filter on what types of cases are appealed, because judges have to consider in advance which cases will be accepted. The appeals court will then be able to decide substantive cases with the lowest opportunity cost.

Opinion of the Court

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 White Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, American football player

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.

Eleventh Amendment to the United States Constitution US constitution amendment dealing with each states sovereign immunity

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's dissent

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 American judge

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.

Justice Stevens' dissent

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]

See also

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References

  1. ↑ Will v. Michigan Department of State Police, 491 U.S. 58 (1989).
  2. ↑ 491 U.S. 58, 60–61.
  3. ↑ 491 U.S. 58, 61.
  4. ↑ 491 U.S. at 66.
  5. ↑ 491 U.S. at 71.
  6. ↑ 491 U.S. at 71, n. 10 citing Kentucky v. Graham , 473 U.S. at 473 U.S. 167, n. 14; Ex parte Young , 209 U. S. 123, 209 U.S. 159–160 (1908).
  7. ↑ 491 U.S. at 77–78, citing Act of Feb. 25, 1871, § 2, 16 Stat. 431.
  8. ↑ 491 U.S. at 78, quoting 436 U.S. at 689–90, n. 53.
  9. ↑ 491 U.S. at 93.
  10. ↑ 491 U.S. at 93–94.
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