State action refers to any affirmative act by a government or its members. Private individuals can make constitutional claims against state action. Direct acts of government are indisputably actions of the state, but other situations can also be interpreted as involving state action, such as private individuals acting in a way traditionally reserved for the government or if the government directly facilitates a private individual’s action. State involvement must be significant, and allowing discriminatory restrictive settlements to be enforced by a homeowners association can be interpreted as state action.
A state action is any affirmative act by a government or its members. Whether or not something amounts to state action is legally relevant in constitutional law when a private individual wants to make a constitutional claim that his or her civil rights have been violated. Typically, a person’s rights that are conferred in the constitution of the nation in which the person lives are enforceable only against state action. Apart from the obvious direct acts of government, other situations can be interpreted as involving state action. Such an implication can also arise if a private individual acts in a way that is traditionally reserved exclusively for the government, as well as if the government directly facilitates the action of a private individual.
Direct acts of government are indisputably actions of the state. This direct act can be anything from an arrest to a law passed by the nation’s lawmakers. For example, there may be a country whose constitution protects citizens’ right to free speech. In the event that the nation’s lawmakers pass a law prohibiting speaking out against the government, the law would likely be struck down as an unconstitutional state action.
Some situations may involve state action where it is not entirely obvious. If private parties engage in activities that are traditionally of an exclusively government nature, then those activities can be treated as if they were conducted by the state. Consider a hypothetical small mining community of fewer than 100 people in a rural area largely isolated from the rest of the state. If, as a result, the community develops its own rules and enforcement methods, any enforcement of those rules will likely be treated as a state action.
Another way an act that was not done directly by the government might be considered a state action is if the government is significantly involved in conducting a non-governmental action. State involvement in activities must be significant, which means that the government must directly facilitate the activity. For example, many courts have held that allowing discriminatory restrictive settlements to be enforced by a homeowners association—the group of neighborhood owners who contractually agree not to sell any of their homes to a particular race , can be interpreted as a state action . The rationale behind this classification is that by holding such agreements valid, the state provides legal avenues to enforce discrimination.
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