State Action Doctrine

The state action doctrine is a principle of United States constitutional law holding that the individual-rights guarantees of the Constitution, including the Fourteenth Amendment, restrain government action and not the conduct of private individuals or organizations. It took its modern shape in the Civil Rights Cases (1883), in which the Supreme Court struck down the public-accommodations provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 on the ground that the Fourteenth Amendment reaches only conduct by a state, not private discrimination, so a litigant invoking a constitutional right must generally show a sufficient governmental nexus to the challenged conduct. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/