This case presents important questions concerning the construction of R.S. § 1979, 42 U.S.C. § 1983, 42 U.S.C.A. § 1983, which reads as follows:

'Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom or usage, of any State or Territory, 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.'

The complaint alleges that 13 Chicago police officers broke into petitioners' home in the early morning, routed them from bed, made them stand naked in the living room, and ransacked every room, emptying drawers and ripping mattress covers. It further alleges that Mr. Monroe was then taken to the police station and detained on 'open' charges for 10 hours, while he was interrogated about a two-day-old murder, that he was not taken before a magistrate, though one was accessible, that he was not permitted to call his family or attorney, that he was subsequently released without criminal charges being preferred against him. It is alleged that the officers had no search warrant and no arrest warrant and that they acted 'under color of the statutes, ordinances, regulations, customs and usages' of Illinois and of the City of Chicago. Federal jurisdiction was asserted under R.S. § 1979, which we have set out above, and 28 U.S.C. § 1343, 28 U.S.C.A. s 1343,1 and 28 U.S.C. § 1331, 28 U.S.C.A. § 1331.2

The City of Chicago moved to dismiss the complaint on the ground that it is not liable under the Civil Rights Acts nor for acts committed in performance of its governmental functions. All defendants moved to dismiss, alleging that the complaint alleged no cause of action under those Acts or under the Federal Constitution. The District Court dismissed the complaint. The Court of Appeals affirmed, 272 F.2d 365, relying on its earlier decision, Stift v. Lynch, 7 Cir., 267 F.2d 237. The case is here on a writ of certiorari which we granted because of a seeming conflict of that ruling with our prior cases. 362 U.S. 926, 80 S.Ct. 756, 4 L.Ed.2d 745.

Petitioners claim that the invasion of their home and the subsequent search without a warrant and the arrest and detention of Mr. Monroe without a warrant and without arraignment constituted a deprivation of their 'rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution' within the meaning of R.S. § 1979. It has been said that when 18 U.S.C. § 241, 18 U.S.C.A. § 241, made criminal a conspiracy 'to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any citizen in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution,' it embraced only rights that an individual has by reason of his relation to the central government, not to state governments. United States v. Williams, 341 U.S. 70, 71 S.Ct. 581, 95 L.Ed. 758. Cf. United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542, 23 L.Ed. 588; Ex parte Yarbrough, 110 U.S. 651, 4 S.Ct. 152, 28 L.Ed. 274; Guinn v. United States, 238 U.S. 347, 35 S.Ct. 926, 59 L.Ed. 1340. But the history of the section of the Civil Rights Act presently involved does not permit such a narrow interpretation.

Section 1979 came onto the books as § 1 of the Ku Klux Act of April 20, 1871. 17 Stat. 13. It was one of the means whereby Congress exercised the power vested in it by § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to enforce the provisions of that Amendment.3 Senator Edmunds, Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, said concerning this section:

'The first section is one that I believe nobody objects to, as defining the rights secured by the Constitution of the United States when they are assailed by any State law or under color of any State law, and it is merely carrying out the principles of the civil rights bill,4 which has since become a part of the Constitution,'5 viz., the Fourteenth Amendment.

Its purpose is plain from the title of the legislation, 'An Act to enforce the Provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and for other Purposes.' 17 Stat. 13. Allegation of facts constituting a deprivation under color of state authority of a right guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment satisfies to that extent the requirement of R.S. § 1979. See Douglas v. City of Jeannette, 319 U.S. 157, 161—162, 63 S.Ct. 877, 880, 87 L.Ed. 1324. So far petitioners are on solid ground. For the guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures contained in the Fourth Amendment has been made applicable to the States by reason of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Wolf v. People of State of Colorado, 338 U.S. 25, 69 S.Ct. 1359, 93 L.Ed. 1782; Elkins v. United States, 364 U.S. 206, 213, 80 S.Ct. 1437, 1441, 4 L.Ed.2d 1669.

There can be no doubt at least since Ex parte Virginia, 100 U.S. 339, 346—347, 25 L.Ed. 676, that Congress has the power to enforce provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment against those who carry a badge of authority of a State and represent it in some capacity, whether they act in accordance with their authority or misuse it. See Home Tel. & Tel. Co. v. City of Los Angeles, 227 U.S. 278, 287—296, 33 S.Ct. 312, 314, 318, 57 L.Ed. 510. The question with which we now deal is the narrower one of whether Congress, in enacting § 1979, meant to give a remedy to parties deprived of constitutional rights, privileges and immunities by an official's abuse of his position. Cf. Williams v. United States, 341 U.S. 97, 71 S.Ct. 576, 95 L.Ed. 774; Screws v. United States, 325 U.S. 91, 65 S.Ct. 1031, 89 L.Ed. 1495; United States v. Classic, 313 U.S. 299, 61 S.Ct. 1031, 85 L.Ed. 1368. We conclude that it did so intend.

It is argued that 'under color of' enumerated state authority excludes acts of an official or policeman who can show no authority under state law, state custom, or state usage to do what he did. In this case it is said that these policemen, in breaking into petitioners' apartment, violated the Constitution6 and laws of Illinois. It is pointed out that under Illinois law a simple remedy is offered for that violation and that, so far as it appears, the courts of Illinois are available to give petitioners that full redress which the common law affords for violence done to a person; and it is earnestly argued that no 'statute, ordinance, regulation, custom or usage' of Illinois bars that redress.

The Ku Klux Act grew out of a message sent to Congress by President Grant on March 23, 1871, reading:

'A condition of affairs now exists in some States of the Union rendering life and property insecure and the carrying of the mails and the collection of the revenue dangerous. The proof that such a condition of affairs exists in some localities is now before the Senate. That the power to correct these evils is beyond the control of State authorities I do not doubt; that the power of the Executive of the United States, acting within the limits of existing laws, is sufficient for present emergencies is not clear. Therefore, I urgently recommend such legislation as in the judgment of Congress shall effectually secure life, liberty, and property, and the enforcement of law in all parts of the United States. * * *'7

The legislation—in particular the section with which we are now concerned—had several purposes. There are threads of many thoughts running through the debates. One who reads them in their entirety sees that the present section had three main aims.

First, it might, of course, override certains kinds of state laws. Mr. Sloss of Alabama, in opposition, spoke of that object and emphasized that it was irrelevant because there were no such laws:8

'The first section of this bill prohibits any invidious legislation by States against the rights or privileges of citizens of the United States. The object of this section is not very clear, as it is not pretended by its advocates on this floor that any State has passed any laws endangering the rights or privileges of the colored people.'

Second, it provided a remedy where state law was inadequate. That aspect of the legislation was summed up as follows by Senator Sherman of Ohio:

'* * * it is said the reason is that any offense may be committed upon a negro by a white man, and a negro cannot testify in any case against a white man, so that the only way by which any conviction can be had in Kentucky in those cases is in the United States courts, because the United States courts enforce the United States laws by which negroes may testify.'9

But the purposes were much broader. The third aim was to provide a federal remedy where the state remedy, though adequate in theory, was not available in practice. The opposition to the measure complained that 'It overrides the reserved powers of the States,'10 just as they argued that the second section of the bill 'absorb(ed) the entire jurisdiction of the State over their local and domestic affairs.'11

This Act of April 20, 1871, sometimes called 'the third 'force bill," was passed by a Congress that had the Klan 'particularly in mind.'12 The debates are replete with references to the lawless conditions existing in the South in 1871. There was available to the Congress during these debates a report, nearly 600 pages in length, dealing with the activities of the Klan and the inability of the state governments to cope with it.13 This report was drawn on by many of the speakers.14 It was not the unavailability of state remedies but the failure of certain States to enforce the laws with an equal hand that furnished the powerful momentum behind this 'force bill.' Mr. Lowe of Kansas said:

'While murder is stalking abroad in disguise, while whippings and lynchings and banishment have been visited upon unoffending American citizens, the local administrations have been found inadequate or unwilling to apply the proper corrective. Combinations, darker than the night that hides them, conspiracies, wicked as the worst of felons could devise, have gone unwhipped of justice. Immunity is given to crime, and the records of the public tribunals are searched in vain for any evidence of effective redress.'15

Mr. Beatty of Ohio summarized in the House the case for the bill when he said:

'* * * certain States have denied to persons within their jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. The proof on this point is voluminous and unquestionable. * * * (M)en were murdered, houses were burned, women were outraged, men were scouraged, and officers of the law shot down; and the State made no successful effort to bring the guilty to punishment or afford protection or redress to the outraged and innocent. The State, from lack of power or inclination, practically denied the equal protection of the law to these persons.'16

While one main scourge of the evil—perhaps the leading one was the Ku Klux Klan,17 the remedy created was not a remedy against it or its members but against those who representing a State in some capacity were unable or unwilling to enforce a state law. Senator Osborn of Florida put the problem in these terms:18

'That the State courts in the several States have been unable to enforce the criminal laws of their respective States or to suppress the disorders existing, and in fact that the preservation of life and property in many sections of the country is beyond the power of the State government, is a sufficient reason why Congress should, so far as they have authority under the Constitution, enact the laws necessary for the protection of citizens of the United States. The question of the constitutional authority for the requisite legislation has been sufficiently discussed.'

There was, it was said, no quarrel with the state laws on the books. It was their lack of enforcement that was the nub of the difficulty. Speaking of conditions in Virginia, Mr. Porter of that State said:19

'The outrages committed upon loyal men there are under the forms of law.'

Mr. Burchard of Illinois pointed out that the statutes of a State may show no discrimination:20

'If the State Legislature pass a law discriminating against any portion of its citizens, or if it fails to enact provisions equally applicable to every class for the protection of their person and property, it will be admitted that the State does not afford the equal protection. But if the statutes show no discrimination, yet in its judicial tribunals one class is unable to secure that enforcement of their rights and punishment for their infraction which is accorded to another, or if secret combinations of men are allowed by the Executive to band together to deprive one class of citizens of their legal rights without a proper effort to discover, detect, and punish the violations of law and order, the State has not afforded to all its citizens the equal protection of the laws.'

'Now, it is an effectual denial by a State of the equal protection of the laws when any class of officers charged under the laws with their administration permanently and as a rule refuse to extend that protection. If every sheriff in South Carolina refuses to serve a writ for a colored man and those sheriffs are kept in office year after year by the people of South Carolina, and no verdict against them for their failure of duty can be obtained before a South Carolina jury, the State of South Carolina, through the class of officers who are its representatives to afford the equal protection of the laws to that class of citizens, has denied that protection. If the jurors of South Carolina constantly and as a rule refuse to do justice between man and man where the rights of a particular class of its citizens are concerned, and that State affords by its legislation no remedy, that is as much a denial to that class of citizens of the equal protection of the laws as if the State itself put on its statute-book a statute enacting that no verdict should be rendered in the courts of that State in favor of this class of citizens.' Senator Pratt of Indiana spoke of the discrimination against Union sympathizers and Negroes in the actual enforcement of the laws:22

'Plausibly and sophistically it is said the laws of North Carolina do not discriminate against them; that the provisions in favor of rights and liberties are general; that the courts are open to all; that juries, grand and petit, are commanded to hear and redress without distinction as to color, race, or political sentiment.

'But it is a fact, asserted in the report, that of the hundreds of outrages committed upon loyal people through the agency of this Ku Klux organization not one has been punished. This defect in the administration of the laws does not extend to other cases. Vigorously enough are the laws enforced against Union people. They only fail in efficiency when a man of known Union sentiments, white or black, invokes their aid. Then Justice closes the door of her temples.'

It was precisely that breadth of the remedy which the opposition emphasized. Mr. Kerr of Indiana referring to the section involved in the present litigation said:

'This section gives to any person who may have been injured in any of his rights, privileges, or immunities of person or property, a civil action for damages against the wrongdoer in the Federal courts. The offenses committed against him may be the common violations of the municipal law of his State. It may give rise to numerous vexations and outrageous prosecutions, inspired by mere mercenary considerations, prosecuted in a spirit of plunder, aided by the crimes of perjury and subornation of perjury, more reckless and dangerous to society than the alleged offenses out of which the cause of action may have arisen. It is a covert attempt to transfer another large portion of jurisdiction from the State tribunals, to which it of right belongs, to those of the United States. It is neither authorized nor expedient, and is not calculated to bring peace, or order, or domestic content and prosperity to the disturbed society of the South. The contrary will certainly be its effect.'23

Mr. Voorhees of Indiana, also speaking in opposition, gave it the same construction:24

'And now for a few moments let us inspect the provisions of this bill, inspired as it is by the waning and decaying fortunes of the party in power, and called for, as I have shown, by no public necessity whatever. The first and second sections are designed to transfer all criminal jurisdiction from the courts of the States to the courts of the United States. This is to be done upon the assumption that the courts of the southern States fail and refuse to do their duty in the punishment of offenders against the law.'

Senator Thurman of Ohio spoke in the same vein about the section we are now considering:25

'It authorizes any person who is deprived of any right, privilege, or immunity secured to him by the Constitution of the United States, to bring an action against the wrongdoer in the Federal courts, and that without any limit whatsoever as to the amount in controversy. The deprivation may be of the slightest conceivable character, the damages in the estimation of any sensible man may not be five dollars or even five cents; they may be what lawyers call merely nominal damages; and yet by this section jurisdiction of that civil action is given to the Federal courts instead of its being prosecuted as now in the courts of the States.'

The debates were long and extensive. It is abundantly clear that one reason the legislation was passed was to afford a federal right in federal courts because, by reason of prejudice, passion, neglect, intolerance or otherwise, state laws might not be enforced and the claims of citizens to the enjoyment of rights, privileges, and immunities guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment might be denied by the state agencies.

Much is made of the history of § 2 of the proposed legislation. As introduced § 2 was very broad:

'* * * if two or more persons shall, within the limits of any State, band, conspire, or combine together to do any act in violation of the rights, privileges, or immunities of any person, to which he is entitled under the Constitution and laws of the United States, which, committed within a place under the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of the United States, would, under any law of the United States then in force, constitute the crime of either murder, manslaughter, mayhem, robbery, assault and battery, perjury, subornation of perjury, criminal obstruction of legal process or resistance of officers in discharge of official duty, arson, of larceny; and if one or more of the parties to said conspiracy or combination shall do any act to effect the object thereof, all the parties to or engaged in said conspiracy or combination, whether principals or accessories, shall be deemed guilty of a felony * * *.'

It was this provision that raised the greatest storm. It was § 2 that was rewritten so as to be in the main confined to conspiracies to interfere with a federal or state officer in the performance of his duties. 17 Stat. 13. Senator Trumbull said:26

'Those provisions were changed, and as the bill passed the House of Representatives, it was understood by the members of that body to go no further than to protect persons in the rights which were guarantied to them by the Constitution and laws of the United States, and it did not undertake to furnish redress for wrongs done by one person upon another in any of the States of the Union in violation of their laws, unless he also violated some law of the United States, nor to punish one person for an ordinary assault and battery committed on another in a State.'

But § 1—the section with which we are here concerned—was not changed as respects any feature with which we are presently concerned.27 The words 'under color of' law were in the legislation from the beginning to the end. The changes hailed by the opposition—indeed the history of the evolution of § 2 much relied upon now—are utterly irrelevant to the problem before us, viz., the meaning of 'under color of' law. The vindication of States' rights which was hailed in the amendments to § 2 raises no implication as to the construction to be given to 'color of any law' in § 1. The scope of § 1—under any construction—is admittedly narrower than was the scope of the original version of § 2. Opponents of the Act, however, did not fail to note that by virtue of § 1 federal courts would sit in judgment on the misdeeds of state officers.28 Proponents of the Act, on the other hand, were aware of the extension of federal power contemplated by every section of the Act. They found justification, however, for this extension in considerations such as those advanced by Mr. Hoar:29

'The question is not whether a majority of the people in a majority of the States are likely to be attached to and able to secure their own liberties. The question is not whether the majority of the people in every State are not likely to desire to secure their own rights. It is, whether a majority of the people in every State are sure to be so attached to the principles of civil freedom and civil justice as to be as much desirous of preserving the liberties of others as their own, as to insure that under no temptation of party spirit, under no political excitement, under no jealousy of race or caste, will the majority either in numbers or strength in any State seek to deprive the remainder of the population of their civil rights.'

Although the legislation was enacted because of the conditions that existed in the South at that time, it is cast in general language and is as applicable to Illinois as it is to the States whose names were mentioned over and again in the debates. It is no answer that the State has a law which if enforced would give relief. The federal remedy is supplementary to the state remedy, and the latter need not be first sought and refused before the federal one is invoked. Hence the fact that Illinois by its constitution and laws outlaws unreasonable searches and seizures is no barrier to the present suit in the federal court.

We had before us in United States v. Classic, supra, § 20 of the Criminal Code, 18 U.S.C. § 242, 18 U.S.C.A. § 242,30 which provides a criminal punishment for anyone who 'under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom' subjects any inhabitant of a State to the deprivation of 'any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.' Section 242 first came into the law as § 2 of the Civil Rights Act, Act of April 9, 1866, 14 Stat. 27. After passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, this provision was re-enacted and amended by §§ 17, 18, Act of May 31, 1870, 16 Stat. 140, 144.31 The right involved in the Classic case was the right of voters in a primary to have their votes counted. The laws of Louisiana required the defendants 'to count the ballots, to record the result of the count, and to certify the result of the election.' United States v. Classic, supra, 313 U.S. 325—326, 61 S.Ct. 1043. But according to the indictment they did not perform their duty. In an opinion written by Mr. Justice (later Chief Justice) Stone, in which Mr. Justice Roberts, Mr. Justice Reed, and Mr. Justice Frankfurter joined, the Court ruled, 'Misuse of power, possessed by virtue of state law and made possible only because the wrongdoer is clothed with the authority of state law, is action taken 'under color of' state law.' Id., 313 U.S. 326, 61 S.Ct. 1043. There was a dissenting opinion; but the ruling as to the meaning of 'under color of' state law was not questioned.

That view of the meaning of the words 'under color of' state law, 18 U.S.C. § 242, 18 U.S.C.A. § 242, was reaffirmed in Screws v. United States, supra, 325 U.S. 108—113, 65 S.Ct. 1038—1041. The acts there complained of were committed by state officers in performance of their duties, viz., making an arrest effective. It was urged there, as it is here, that 'under color of' state law should not be construed to duplicate in federal law what was an offense under state law. Id., 325 U.S. 138—149, 157—161, 65 S.Ct. 1053—1058, 1061—1063 (dissenting opinion). It was said there, as it is here, that the ruling in the Classic case as to the meaning of 'under color of' state law was not in focus and was ill-advised. Id., 325 U.S. 146—147, 65 S.Ct. 1056—1057 (dissenting opinion). It was argued there, as it is here, that 'under color of' state law included only action taken by officials pursuant to state law. Id., 325 U.S. 141—146, 65 S.Ct. 1054—1056 (dissenting opinion). We rejected that view. Id., 325 U.S. 110—113, 114-117, 65 S.Ct. 1039—1041, 1041—1043 (concurring opinion). We stated:

'The construction given § 20 (18 U.S.C. § 242, 18 U.S.C.A. § 242) in the Classic case formulated a rule of law which has become the basis of federal enforcement in this important field. The rule adopted in that case was formulated after mature consideration. It should be good for more than one day only. We do not have here a situation comparable to Mahnich v. Southern S.S. Co., 321 U.S. 96, 64 S.Ct. 455, 88 L.Ed. 561, where we overruled a decision demonstrated to be a sport in the law and inconsistent with what preceded and what followed. The Classic case was not the product of hasty action or inadvertence. It was not out of line with the cases which preceded. It was designed to fashion the governing rule of law in this important field. We are not dealing with constitutional interpretations which throughout the history of the Court have wisely remained flexible and subject to frequent re-examination. The meaning which the Classic case gave to the phrase 'under color of any law' involved only a construction of the statute. Hence if it states a rule undesirable in its consequences, Congress can change it. We add only to the instability and uncertainty of the law if we revise the meaning of § 20 (18 U.S.C. § 242, 18 U.S.C.A. § 242) to meet the exigencies of each case coming before us.' Id., 325 U.S. 112—113, 65 S.Ct. 1040—1041.

We adhered to that view in Williams v. United States, supra, 341 U.S. 99, 71 S.Ct. 578.

Mr. Shellabarger, reporting out the bill which became the Ku Klux Act, said of the provision with which we now deal:

'The model for it will be found in the second section of the act of April 9, 1866, known as the 'civil rights act.' * * * This section of this bill, on the same state of facts, not only provides a civil remedy for persons whose former condition may have been that of slaves, but also to all people where, under color of State law, they or any of them may be deprived of rights * * *.'32

Thus, it is beyond doubt that this phrase should be accorded the same construction in both statutes—in § 1979 and in 18 U.S.C. § 242, 18 U.S.C.A. § 242.

Since the Screws and Williams decisions, Congress has had several pieces of civil rights legislation before it. In 1956 one bill reached the floor of the House. This measure had at least one provision in it penalizing actions taken 'under color of law or otherwise.'33 A vigorous minority report was filed attacking, inter alia, the words 'or otherwise.'34 But not a word of criticism of the phrase 'under color of' state law as previously construed by the Court is to be found in that report.

Section 131(c) of the Act of September 9, 1957, 71 Stat. 634, 637, amended 42 U.S.C. § 1971, 42 U.S.C.A. § 1971, by adding a new subsection which provides that no person 'whether acting under color of law or otherwise' shall intimidate any other person in voting as he chooses for federal officials. A vigorous minority report was filed35 attacking the wide scope of the new subsection by reason of the words 'or otherwise.' It was said in that minority report that those words went far beyond what this Court had construed 'under color of law' to mean.36 But there was not a word of criticism directed to the prior construction given by this Court to the words 'under color of' law.

The Act of May 6, 1960, 74 Stat. 86, 42 U.S.C.A. §§ 1971, 1974 et seq., uses 'under color of' law in two contexts, once when § 306 defines 'officer of election' and next when § 601(a) gives a judicial remedy on behalf of a qualified voter denied the opportunity to register. Once again there was a Committee report containing minority views.37 Once again no one challenged the scope given by our prior decisions to the phrase 'under color of' law.

If the results of our construction of 'under color of' law were as horrendous as now claimed, if they were as disruptive of our federal scheme as now urged, if they were such an unwarranted invasion of States' rights as pretended, surely the voice of the opposition would have been heard in those Committee reports. Their silence and the new uses to which 'under color of' law have recently been given reinforce our conclusion that our prior decisions were correct on this matter of construction.

We conclude that the meaning given 'under color of' law in the Classic case and in the Screws and Williams cases was the correct one; and we adhere to it.

In the Screws case we dealt with a statute that imposed criminal penalties for acts 'wilfully' done. We construed that word in its setting to mean the doing of an act with 'a specific intent to deprive a person of a federal right.' 325 U.S. at page 103, 65 S.Ct. at page 1036. We do not think that gloss should be placed on § 1979 which we have here. The word 'wilfully' does not appear in § 1979. Moreover, § 1979 provides a civil remedy, while in the Screws case we dealt with a criminal law challenged on the ground of vagueness. Section 1979 should be read against the background of tort liability that makes a man responsible for the natural consequences of his actions.

So far, then, the complaint states a cause of action. There remains to consider only a defense peculiar to the City of Chicago.

The City of Chicago asserts that it is not liable under § 1979. We do not stop to explore the whole range of questions tendered us on this issue at oral argument and in the briefs. For we are of the opinion that Congress did not undertake to bring municipal corporations within the ambit of § 1979.

When the bill that became the Act of April 20, 1871, was being debated in the Senate, Senator Sherman of Ohio proposed an amendment which would have made 'the inhabitants of the county, city, or parish' in which certain acts of violence occurred liable 'to pay full compensation' to the person damaged or his widow or legal representative.38 The amendment was adopted by the Senate.39 The House, however, rejected it.40 The Conference Committee reported another version.41 The House rejected the Conference report.42 In a second conference the Sherman amendment was dropped and in its place § 6 of the Act of April 20, 1871, was substituted.43 This new section, which is now R.S. § 1981, 42 U.S.C. § 1986, 42 U.S.C.A. § 1986, dropped out all provision for municipal liability and extended liability in damages to 'any person or persons, having knowledge that any' of the specified wrongs are being committed. Mr. Poland, speaking for the House Conferees about the Sherman proposal to make municipalities liable, said:

'We informed the conferees on the part of the Senate that the House had taken a stand on that subject and would not recede from it; that that section imposing liability upon towns and counties must go out or we should fail to agree.'44

The objection to the Sherman amendment stated by Mr. Poland was that 'the House had solemnly decided that in their judgment Congress had no constitutional power to impose any obligation upon county and town organizations, the mere instrumentality for the administration of state law.'45 The question of constitutional power of Congress to impose civil liability on municipalities was vigorously debated with powerful arguments advanced in the affirmative.46

Much reliance is placed on the Act of February 25, 1871, 16 Stat. 431, entitled 'An Act prescribing the Form of the enacting and resolving Clauses of Acts and Resolutions of Congress, and Rules for the Construction thereof.' Section 2 of this Act provides that 'the word 'person' may extend and be applied to bodies politic and corporate.'47 It should be noted, however, that this definition is merely an allowable, not a mandatory, one. It is said that doubts should be resolved in favor of municipal liability because private remedies against officers for illegal searches and seizures are conspicuously ineffective,48 and because municipal liability will not only afford plaintiffs responsible defendants but cause those defendants to eradicate abuses that exist at the police level.49 We do not reach those policy considerations. Nor do we reach the constitutional question whether Congress has the power to make municipalities liable for acts of its officers that violate the civil rights of individuals.

The response of the Congress to the proposal to make municipalities liable for certain actions being brought within federal purview by the Act of April 20, 1871, was so antagonistic that we cannot believe that the word 'person' was used in this particular Act to include them.50 Accordingly we hold that the motion to dismiss the complaint against the City of Chicago was properly granted. But since the complaint should not have been dismissed against the officials the judgment must be and is reversed.

Reversed.

Mr. Justice HARLAN, whom Mr. Justice STEWART joins, concurring.

Were this case here as one of first impression, I would find the 'under color of any statute' issue very close indeed. However, in Classic1 and Screws2 this Court considered a substantially identical statutory phrase to have a meaning which, unless we now retreat from it, requires that issue to go for the petitioners here.

From my point of view, the policy of stare decisis, as it should be applied in matters of statutory construction and, to a lesser extent, the indications of congressional acceptance of this Court's earlier interpretation, require that it appear beyond doubt from the legislative history of the 1871 statute that Classic and Screws misapprehended the meaning of the controlling provision,3 before a departure from what was decided in those cases would be justified. Since I can find no such justifying indication in that legislative history, I join the opinion of the Court. However, what has been written on both sides of the matter makes some additional observations appropriate.

Those aspects of Congress' purpose which are quite clear in the earlier congressional debates, as quoted by my Brothers DOUGLAS and FRANKFURTER in turn, seem to me to be inherently ambiguous when applied to the case of an isolated abuse of state authority by an official. One can agree with the Court's opinion that:

'It is abundantly clear that one reason the legislation was passed was to afford a federal right in federal courts because, by reason of prejudice, passion, neglect, intolerance or otherwise, state laws might not be enforced and the claims of citizens to the enjoyment of rights, privileges, and immunities guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment might be denied by the state agencies * * *'

Without being certain that Congress meant to deal with anything other than abuses so recurrent as to amount to 'custom, or usage.' One can agree with any Brother FRANKFURTER, in dissent, that Congress had no intention of taking over the whole field of ordinary state torts and crimes, without being certain that the enacting Congress would not have regarded actions by an official, made possible by his position, as far more serious than an ordinary state tort, and therefore as a matter of federal concern. If attention is directed at the rare specific references to isolated abuses of state authority, one finds them neither so clear nor so disproportionately divided between favoring the positions of the majority or the dissent as to make either position seem plainly correct.4

Besides the inconclusiveness I find in the legislative history, it seems to me by no means evident that a position favoring departure from Classic and Screws fits better that with which the enacting Congress was concerned than does the position the Court adopted 20 years ago. There are apparent incongruities in the view of the dissent which may be more easily reconciled in terms of the earlier holding in Classic.

The dissent considers that the 'under color of' provision of § 1983 distinguishes between unconstitutional actions taken without state authority, which only the State should remedy, and unconstitutional actions authorized by the State, which the Federal Act was to reach. If so, then the controlling difference for the enacting legislature must have been either that the state remedy was more adequate for unauthorized actions than for authorized ones or that there was, in some sense, greater harm from unconstitutional actions authorized by the full panoply of state power and approval than from unconstitutional actions not so authorized or acquiesced in by the State. I find less than compelling the evidence that either distinction was important to that Congress.

If the state remedy was considered adequate when the official's unconstitutional act was unauthorized, why should it not be thought equally adequate when the unconstitutional act was authorized? For if one thing is very clear in the legislative history, it is that the Congress of 1871 was well aware that no action requiring state judicial enforcement could be taken in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment without that enforcement being declared void by this Court on direct review from the state courts. And presumably it must also have been understood that there would be Supreme Court review of the denial of a state damage remedy against an official on grounds of state authorization of the unconstitutional action. It therefore seems to me that the same state remedies would, with ultimate aid of Supreme Court review, furnish identical relief in the two situations. This is the point Senator Blair made when, having stated that the object of the Fourteenth Amendment was to prevent any discrimination by the law of any State, he argued that:

'This being forbidden by the Constitution of the United States, and all the judges, State and national, being sworn to support the Constitution of the United States, and the Supreme Court of the United States having power to supervise and correct the action of the State courts when they violated the Constitution of the United States, there could be no danger of the violation of the right of citizens under color of the laws of the States.' Cong. Globe, 42d Cong., 1st Sess., at App. 231.

Since the suggested narrow construction of § 1983 presupposes that state measures were adequate to remedy unauthorized deprivations of constitutional rights and since the identical state relief could be obtained for state-authorized acts with the aid of Supreme Court review, this narrow construction would reduce the statute to having merely a jurisdictional function, shifting the load of federal supervision from the Supreme Court to the lower courts and providing a federal tribunal for fact findings in cases involving authorized action. Such a function could be justified on various grounds. It could, for example, be argued that the state courts would be less willing to find a constitutional violation in cases involving 'authorized action' and that therefore the victim of such action would bear a greater burden in that he would more likely have to carry his case to this Court, and once here, might be bound by unfavorable state court findings. But the legislative debates do not disclose congressional concern about the burdens of litigation placed upon the victims of 'authorized' constitutional violations contrasted to the victims of unauthorized violations. Neither did Congress indicate an interest in relieving the burden placed on this Court in reviewing such cases.

The statute becomes more than a jurisdictional provision only if one attributes to the enacting legislature the view that a deprivation of a constitutional right is significantly different from and more serious than a violation of a state right and therefore deserves a different remedy even though the same act may constitute both a state tort and the deprivation of a constitutional right. This view, by no means unrealistic as a common-sense matter,5 is, I believe, more consistent with the flavor of the legislative history than is a view that the primary purpose of the statute was to grant a lower court forum for fact findings. For example, the tone is surely one of overflowing protection of constitutional rights, and there is not a hint of concern about the administrative burden on the Supreme Court, when Senator Freling-huysen says:

'As to the civil remedies, for a violation of these privileges, we know that when the courts of a State violate the provisions of the Constitution or the law of the United States there is now relief afforded by a review in the Federal courts. And since the 14th Amendment forbids any State from making or enforcing any law abridging these privileges and immunities, as you cannot reach the Legislatures, the injured party should have an original action in our Federal courts, so that by injunction or by the recovery of damages he could have relief against the party who under color of such law is guilty of infringing his rights. As to the civil remedy no one, I think, can object.' Id., at 501.

And Senator Carpenter reflected a similar belief that the protection granted by the statute was to be very different from the relief available on review of state proceedings:

'The prohibition in the old Constitution that no State should pass a law impairing the obligation of contracts was a negative prohibition laid upon the State. Congress was not authorized to interfere in case the State violated that provision. It is true that when private rights were affected by such a State law, and that was brought before the judiciary, either of the State or nation, it was the duty of the court to pronounce the act void; but there the matter ended. Under the present Constitution, however, in regard to those rights which are secured by the fourteenth amendment, they are not left as the right of the citizen in regard to laws impairing the obligation of contracts was left, to be disposed of by the courts as the cases should arise between man and man, but Congress is clothed with the affirmative power and jurisdiction to correct the evil.

'I think there is one of the fundamental, one of the great, the tremendous revolutions effected in our Government by that article of the Constitution. It gives Congress affirmative power to protect the rights of the citizen, whereas before no such right was given to save the citizen from the violation of any of his rights by State Legislatures, and the only remedy was a judicial one when the case arose.' Id., at 577.

In my view, these considerations put in serious doubt the conclusion that § 1983 was limited to state-authorized unconstitutional acts, on the premise that state remedies respecting them were considered less adequate than those available for unauthorized acts.

I think this limited interpretation of § 1983 fares no better when viewed from the other possible premise for it, namely that state-approved constitutional deprivations were considered more offensive than those not so approved. For one thing, the enacting Congress was not unaware of the fact that there was a substantial overlap between the protections granted by state constitutional provisions and those granted by the Fourteenth Amendment. Indeed one opponent of the bill, Senator Trumbull, went so far as to state in a debate with Senators Carpenter and Edmunds that his research indicated a complete overlap in every State, at least as to the protections of the Due Process Clause.6 Thus, in one very significant sense, there was no ultimate state approval of a large portion of otherwise authorized actions depriving a person of due-process rights. I hesitate to assume that the proponents of the present statute, who regarded it as necessary even though they knew that the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment were self-executing, would have thought the remedies unnecessary whenever there were self-executing provisions of state constitutions also forbidding what the Fourteenth Amendment forbids. The only alternative is to disregard the possibility that a state court would find the action unauthorized on grounds of the state constitution. But if the defendant official is denied the right to defend in the federal court upon the ground that a state court would find his action unauthorized in the light of the state constitution, it is difficult to contend that it is the added harmfulness of state approval that justifies a different remedy for authorized than for unauthorized actions of state officers. Moreover, if indeed the legislature meant to distinguish between authorized and unauthorized acts and yet did not mean the statute to be inapplicable whenever there was a state constitutional provision which, reasonably interpreted, gave protection similar to that of a provision of the Fourteenth Amendment, would there not have been some explanation of this exception to the general rule? The fact that there is none in the legislative history at least makes more difficult a contention that these legislators were in fact making a distinction between use and misuse of state power.

There is a further basis for doubt that it was the additional force of state approval which justified a distinction between authorized and unauthorized actions. No one suggests that there is a difference in the showing the plaintiff must make to assert a claim under § 1983 depending upon whether he is asserting a denial of rights secured by the Equal Protection Clause or a denial of rights secured by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. If the same Congress which passed what is now § 1983 also provided remedies against two or more non-officials who conspire to prevent an official from granting equal protection of the laws, see 42 U.S.C. § 1985, 42 U.S.C.A. § 1985, then it would seem almost untenable to insist that this Congress would have hesitated, on the grounds of lack of full state approval of the official's act, to provide similar remedies against an official who, unauthorized, denied that equal protection of the laws on his own initiative. For there would be no likely state approval of or even acquiescence in a conspiracy to coerce a state official to deny equal protection. Indeed it is difficult to attribute to a Congress which forbad two private citizens from hindering an official's giving of equal protection an intent to leave that official free to deny equal protection of his own accord.7

We have not passed upon the question whether 42 U.S.C. § 1985, 42 U.S.C.A. § 1985,8 which was passed as the second section of the Act that included § 1983, was intended to reach only the Ku Klux Klan or other substantially organized group activity, as distinguished from what its words seem to include, any conspiracy of two persons with 'the purpose of preventing or hindering the constituted authorities of any State * * * from giving or securing to all persons within such State * * * the equal protection of the laws * * *.'9 Without now deciding the question, I think it is sufficient to note that the legislative history is not without indications that what the words of the statute seem to state was in fact the meaning assumed by Congress.10

These difficulties in explaining the basis of a distinction between authorized and unauthorized deprivations of constitutional rights fortify my view that the legislative history does not bear the burden which stare decisis casts upon it. For this reason and for those stated in the opinion of the Court, I agree that we should not now depart from the holdings of the Classic and Screws cases.

Mr. Justice FRANKFURTER, dissenting except insofar as the Court holds that this action cannot be maintained against the City of Chicago.

Abstractly stated, this case concerns a matter of statutory construction. So stated, the problem before the Court is denuded of illuminating concreteness and thereby of its far-reaching significance for our federal system. Again abstractly stated, this matter of statutory construction is one upon which the Court has already passed. But it has done so under circumstances and in settings that negative those considerations of social policy upon which the doctrine of stare decisis, calling for the controlling application of prior statutory construction, rests.

This case presents the question of the sufficiency of petitioners' complaint in a civil action for damages brought under the Civil Rights Act, R.S. § 1979, 42 U.S.C. § 1983, 42 U.S.C.A. § 1983.1 The complaint alleges that on October 29, 1958, at 5:45 a.m., thirteen Chicago police officers, led by Deputy Chief of Detectives Pape, broke through two doors of the Monroe apartment, woke the Monroe couple with flashlights, and forced them at gunpoint to leave their bed and stand naked in the center of the living room; that the officers roused the six Monroe children and herded them into the living room; that Detective Pape struck Mr. Monroe several times with his flashlight, calling him 'nigger' and 'black boy'; that another officer pushed Mrs. Monroe; that other officers hit and kicked several of the children and pushed them to the floor; that the police ransacked every room, throwing clothing from closets to the floor, dumping drawers, ripping mattress covers; that Mr. Monroe was then taken to the police station and detained on 'open' charges for ten hours, during which time he was interrogated about a murder2 and exhibited in lineups; that he was not brought before a magistrate, although numerous magistrate's courts were accessible; that he was not advised of his procedural rights; that he was not permitted to call his family or an attorney; that he was subsequently released without criminal charges having been filed against him. It is also alleged that the actions of the officers throughout were without authority of a search warrant or an arrest warrant; that those actions constituted arbitrary and unreasonable conduct; that the officers were employees of the City of Chicago, which furnished each of them with a badge and an identification card designating him as a member of the Police Department; that the officers were agents of the city, acting in the course of their employment and engaged in the performance of their duties; and that it is the custom of the Department to arrest and confine individuals for prolonged periods on 'open' charges for interrogation, with the purpose of inducing incriminating statements, exhibiting its prisoners for identification, holding them incommunicado while police officers investigate their activities, and punishing them by imprisonment without judicial trial. On the basis of these allegations various members of the Monroe family seek damages against the individual police officers and against the City of Chicago. The District Court dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim and the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed. 272 F.2d 365.

Petitioners base their claim to relief in the federal courts on what was enacted as § 1 of the 'Ku Klux Act' of April 20, 1871, 'An Act to enforce the Provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and for other Purposes.' 17 Stat. 13. It became, with insignificant rephrasing, § 1979 of the Revised Statutes. As now set forth in 42 U.S.C. § 1983, 42 U.S.C.A. § 1983, it is, in relevant part, as follows:

'Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State * * * 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.'

In invoking § 1979 (the old designation will be used hereafter), petitioners contend that its protection of 'rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution' encompasses what 'due process of law' and 'the equal protection of the laws' of the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee against action by the States. In this contention they are supported both by the title of the Act of 1871 and by its legislative history. See the authoritative statement of Mr. Edmunds, reporting the bill from the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Cong. Globe, 42d Cong., 1st Sess. 568. See also id., at 332—334, App. 83—85, 310. It is true that a related phrase, 'any right or privilege secured * * * by the Constitution or laws,' in § 241 of Title 18 U.S.C., 18 U.S.C.A. § 241, was said by a plurality of the Court in United States v. Williams, 341 U.S. 70, 71 S.Ct. 581, 95 L.Ed. 758, to comprehend only the rights arising immediately from the relationship of the individual to the central government. And see United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542, 23 L.Ed. 588.3 But this construction was demanded by § 241, which penalizes conspiracies of private individuals acting as such, while § 1979 applies only to action taken 'under color of any statute,' etc. Different problems of statutory meaning are presented by two enactments deriving from different constitutional sources. See the Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3, 3 S.Ct. 18, 27 L.Ed. 835. Compare United States v. Williams, supra, with Screws v. United States, 325 U.S. 91, 65 S.Ct. 1031, 89 L.Ed. 1495. If petitioners have alleged facts constituting a deprivation under color of state authority of a right assured them by the Fourteenth Amendment, they have brought themselves within § 1979. Douglas v. City of Jeannette, 319 U.S. 157, 63 S.Ct. 877, 87 L.Ed. 1324; Hague v. C.I.O., 307 U.S. 496, 525—526, 59 S.Ct. 954, 968 969, 83 L.Ed. 1423 (Opinion of Stone, J.).4

To be sure, Screws v. United States, supra, requires a finding of specific intent in order to sustain a conviction under the cognate penal provisions of 18 U.S.C. § 242, 18 U.S.C.A. § 2425—'an intent to deprive a person of a right which has been made specific either by the express terms of the Constitution or laws of the United States or by decisions interpreting them.' 325 U.S. at page 104, 65 S.Ct. at page 1037. Petitioners' complaint here alleges no such specific intent. But, for a number of reasons, this requirement of Screws should not be carried over and applied to civil actions under § 1979. First, the word 'willfully' in 18 U.S.C. § 242, 18 U.S.C.A. § 242, from which the requirement of intent was derived in Screws does not appear in § 1979. Second, § 1979, by the very fact that it is a civil provision, invites treatment different from that to be given its criminal analogue. The constitutional scruples concerning vagueness which were deemed to compel the Screws construction have less force in the context of a civil proceeding,6 and § 1979, insofar as it creates an action for damages, must be read in light of the familiar basis of tort liability that a man is responsible for the natural consequences of his acts. Third, even in the criminal area, the specific intent demanded by Screws has proved to be an abstraction serving the purposes of a constitutional need without impressing any actual restrictions upon the nature of the crime which the jury tries. The Screws opinion itself said that 'The fact that the defendants may not have been thinking in constitutional terms is not material where their aim was not to enforce local law but to deprive a citizen of a right and that right was protected by the Constitution.' 325 U.S. at page 106, 65 S.Ct. at page 1037. And lower courts in applying the statute have allowed inference of the requisite specific intent from evidence, it would appear, of malevolence alone.7 But if intent to infringe 'specific' constitutional rights comes in practice to mean no more than intent without justification to bring about the circumstances which infringe those rights, then the consequence of introducing the specific intent issue into a litigation is, in effect, to require fictional pleading, needlessly burden jurors with abstruse instructions, and lessen the degree of control which federal courts have over jury vagaries.

If the courts are to enforce § 1979, it is an unhappy form of judicial disapproval to surround it with doctrines which partially and unequally obstruct its operation. Specific intent in the context of the section would cause such embarrassment without countervailing justification. Petitioners' allegations that respondents in fact did the acts which constituted violations of constitutional rights are sufficient.

To show such violations, petitioners invoke primarily the Amendment's Due Process Clause.8 The essence of their claim is that the police conduct here alleged offends those requirements of decency and fairness which, because they are 'implicit in the concept of ordered liberty,' are imposed by the Due Process Clause upon the States. Palko v. State of Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 325, 58 S.Ct. 149, 152, 82 L.Ed. 288. When we apply to their complaint that standard of a 'principle of justice so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental,'9 which has been the touchstone for this Court's enforcement of due process,10 the merit of this constitutional claim is evident. The conception expressed in Wolf v. People of State of Colorado, 338 U.S. 25, 27, 69 S.Ct. 1359, 1361, 93 L.Ed. 1782, that 'The security of one's privacy against arbitrary intrusion by the police * * * is basic to a free society,' was not an innovation of Wolf. The tenet that there exists a realm of sanctuary surrounding every individual and infrangible, save in a very limited class of circumstances, by the agents of government, had informed the decision of the King's Bench two centuries earlier in Entick v. Carrington, 2 Wils, 275, had been the basis of Otis' contemporary speech against the Writ of Assistance, see Gray's notes in Quincy's Massachusetts Reports, App. I, at 471; Tudor, Life of James Otis (1823) 63, and has in the intervening years found expression not only in the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, but also in the fundamental law of every State.11 Modern totalitarianisms have been a stark reminder, but did not newly teach, that the kicked-in door is the symbol of a rule of fear and violence fatal to institutions founded on respect for the integrity of man.

The essence of the liberty protected by the common law and by the American constitutions was 'the right to shut the door on officials of the state unless their entry is under proper authority of law'; particularly, 'the right to resist unauthorized entry which has as its design the securing of information to fortify the coercive power of the state against the individual.' Frank v. State of Maryland, 359 U.S. 360, 365, 79 S.Ct. 804, 808, 3 L.Ed.2d 877.12 Searches of the dwelling house were the special object of this universal condemnation of official intrusion.13 Night-time search was the evil in its most obnoxious form.14 Few reported cases have presented all of the manifold aggravating circumstances which petitioners here allege—intrusion en masse, by dark, by force, unauthorized by warrant, into an occupied private home, without even the asserted justification of belief by the intruders that the inhabitants were presently committing some criminal act within; physical abuse and the calculated degradation of insult and forced nakedness; sacking and disordering of personal effects throughout the home; arrest and detention against the background terror of threatened criminal proceedings. Wherever similar conduct has appeared, the courts have unanimously condemned police entries as lawless.15

If the question whether due process forbids this kind of police invasion were before us in isolation, the answer would be quick. If, for example, petitioners had sought damages in the state courts of Illinois and if those courts had refused redress on the ground that the official character of the respondents clothed them with civil immunity, we would be faced with the sort of situation to which the language in the Wolf opinion was addressed: 'we have no hesitation in saying that were a State affirmatively to sanction such police incursion into privacy it would run counter to the guaranty of the Fourteenth Amendment.' 338 U.S. at page 28, 69 S.Ct. at page 1361. If that issue is not reached in this case it is not because the conduct which the record here presents can be condoned. But by bringing their action in a Federal District Court petitioners cannot rest on the Fourteenth Amendment simpliciter. They invoke the protection of a specific statute by which Congress restricted federal judicial enforcement of its guarantees to particular enumerated circumstances. They must show not only that their constitutional rights have been infringed, but that they have been infringed, 'under color of (state) statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage,' as that phrase is used in the relevant congressional enactment.

Of course, if Congress by appropriate statutory language attempted to reach every act which could be attributed to the States under the Fourteenth Amendment's prohibition: 'No State shall * * *,' the reach of the statute would be the reach of the Amendment itself. Relevant to the enforcement of such a statute would be not only the concept of state action as this Court has developed it, see Nixon v. Condon, 286 U.S. 73, 89, 52 S.Ct. 484, 487, 76 L.Ed. 987, but also considerations of the power of Congress, under the Amendment's Enforcement Clause, to determine what is 'appropriate legislation' to protect the rights which the Fourteenth Amendment secures. Cf. United States v. Raines, 362 U.S. 17, 80 S.Ct. 519, 4 L.Ed.2d 524. Still, in this supposed case we would arrive at the question of what Congress could do only after we had determined what it was that Congress had done. So, in the case before us now, we must ask what Congress did in 1871. We must determine what Congress meant by 'under color' of enumerated state authority.16

Congress used that phrase not only in R.S. § 1979, but also in the criminal provisions of § 2 of the First Civil Rights Act of April 9, 1866, 14 Stat. 27, from which is derived the present 18 U.S.C. § 242, 18 U.S.C.A. § 242,17 and in both cases used it with the same purpose.18 During the seventy year which followed these enactments, cases in this Court in which the 'under color' provisions were invoked uniformly involved action taken either in strict pursuance of some specific command of state law19 or within the scope of executive discretion in the administration of state laws.20 The same is true, with two exceptions, in the lower federal courts.21 In the first of these two cases it was held that § 1979 was not directd to instances of lawless police brutality, although the ruling was not put on 'under color' grounds.22 In the second, an indictment charging a county tax collector with depriving one Ah Koo of a federally secured right under color of a designated California law, set forth in the indictment, was held insufficient against a demurrer. United States v. Jackson, C.C.D.Cal.1874, 26 Fed.Cas. p. 563, No. 15,459. The court wrote:

'The indictment contains no averment that Ah Koo was a foreign miner, and within the provisions of the state law. If this averment be unnecessary * * * the act of congress would then be held to apply to a case of illegal extortion by a tax collector from any person, though such exaction might be wholly unauthorized by the law under which the officer pretended to act.

'We are satisfied that it was not the design of congress to prevent or to punish such abuse of authority by state officers. The object of the act was, not to prevent illegal exactions, but to forbid the execution of state laws, which, by the act itself, are made void * * *.

'It would seem, necessarily, to follow, that the person from whom the tax was exacted must have been a person from whom, under the provisions of the state law, the officer was authorized to exact it. The statute requires that a party shall be subjected to a deprivation of right secured by the statute under color of some law, statute, order or custom; but if this exaction, although made by a tax collector, has been levied upon a person not within the provisions of the state law, the exaction cannot be said to have been made 'under color of law,' any more than a similar exaction from a Chinese miner, made by a person wholly unauthorized, and under the pretense of being a tax collector.' Id., at pages 563—564.

Throughout this period, the only indication of this Court's views on the proper interpretation of the 'under color' language is a dictum in the Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3, 3 S.Ct. 18, 27 L.Ed. 835. There, in striking down other Civil Rights Act provisions which, as the Court regarded them, attempted to reach private conduct not attributable to state authority. Mr. Justice Bradley contrasted those provisions with § 2 of the Act of 1866: 'This (latter) law is clearly corrective in its character, intended to counteract and furnish redress against state laws and proceedings, and customs having the force of law, which sanction the wrongful acts specified.' Id., 109 U.S. at page 16, 3 S.Ct. at page 25.

A sharp change from this uniform application of seventy years was made in 1941, but without acknowledgment or indication of awareness of the revolutionary turnabout from what had been established practice. The opinion in United States v. Classic, 313 U.S. 299, 61 S.Ct. 1031, 85 L.Ed. 1368, accomplished this. The case presented an indictment under § 242 charging certain local Commissioners of Elections with altering ballots cast in a primary held to nominate candidates for Congress. Sustaining the sufficiency of the indictment in an extensive opinion concerned principally with the question whether the right to vote in such a primary was a right secured by the Constitution,23 Mr. Justice Stone wrote that the alteration of the ballots was 'under color' of state law. This holding was summarily announced without exposition; it had been only passingly argued.24 Of the three authorities cited to support it, two did not involve the 'under color' statutes,25 and the third, Hague v. C.I.O., 307 U.S. 496, 59 S.Ct. 954, 83 L.Ed. 1423, was a case in which high-ranking municipal officials claimed authorization for their actions under municipal ordinances (here held unconstitutional) and under the general police powers of the State.26 All three of these cases had dealt with 'State action' problems, and it is 'State action,' not the very different question of the 'under color' clause, that Mr. Justice Stone appears to have considered.27 (I joined in this opinion without having made an independent examination of the legislative history of the relevant legislation or of the authorities drawn upon for the Classic construction. Acquiescence so founded does not preclude the responsible recognition of error disclosed by subsequent study.) When, however, four years later the Court was called on to review the conviction under § 242 of a Georgia County Sheriff who had beaten a Negro prisoner to death, the opinion of four of the six Justices who believed that the statute applied merely invoked Classic and stare decisis and did not reconsider the meaning which that case had uncritically assumed was to be attached to the language, 'under color' of state authority. Screws v. United States, 325 U.S. 91, 65 S.Ct. 1031, 89 L.Ed. 1495. The briefs in the Screws case did not examine critically the legislative history of the Civil Rights Acts.28 The only reference to this history in the plurality opinion, insofar as it bears on the interpretation of the clause 'under color of * * * law,' is contained in a pair of sentences discounting two statements by Senators Trumbull and Sherman regarding the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1870, cited by the minority.29 The bulk of the plurality opinion's treatment of the issue consists of the argument that 'under color' had been construed in Classic and that the construction there put on the words should not be abandoned or revised. 325 U.S. at pages 109 113, 65 S.Ct. at pages 1039—1041. The case of Williams v. United States, 341 U.S. 97, 71 S.Ct. 576, 95 L.Ed. 774, reaffirmed Screws and applied it to circumstances of third-degree brutality practiced by a private detective who held a special police officer's card and was accompanied by a regular policeman.30

Thus, although this Court has three times found that conduct of state officials which is forbidden by state law may be 'under color' of state law for purposes of the Civil Rights Acts, it is accurate to say that that question has never received here the consideration which its importance merits. That regard for controlling legislative history which is conventionally observed by this Court in determining the true meaning of important legislation that does not construe itself31 has never been applied to the 'under color' provisions; particularly, there has never been canvassed the full record of the debates preceding passage of the 1871 Act with which we are concerned in this case. Neither Classic nor Screws nor Williams warrants refusal now to take account of those debates and the illumination they afford. While we may well decline to re-examine recent cases which derive from the judicial process exercised under its adequate safeguards documenting briefs and adequate arguments on both sides as foundation for due deliberation—the relevant demands of stare decisis do not preclude considering, for the first time thoroughly and in the light of the best available evidence of congressional purpose, a statutory interpretation which started as an unexamined assumption on the basis of inapplicable citations and has the claim of a dogma solely through reiteration. Particularly is this so when that interpretation, only recently made, was at its inception a silent reversal of the judicial history of the Civil Rights Acts for three quarters of a century.

'The rule of stare decisis, though one tending to consistency and uniformity of decision, is not inflexible.' Hertz v. Woodman, 218 U.S. 205, 212, 30 S.Ct. 621, 622, 54 L.Ed. 1001. It is true, of course, that the reason for the rule is more compelling in cases involving inferior law, law capable of change by Congress, than in constitutional cases, where this Court—although even in such cases a wise consciousness of the limitations of individual vision has impelled it always to give great weight to prior decisions—nevertheless bears the ultimate obligation for the development of the law as institutions develop. See, e.g., Smith v. All-wright, 321 U.S. 649, 64 S.Ct. 757, 88 L.Ed. 987. But the Court has not always declined to re-examine cases whose outcome Congress might have changed. See Mr. Justice Brandeis, dissenting, in Burnet v. Coronado Oil & Gas Co., 285 U.S. 393, 406—407, note 1, 52 S.Ct. 443, 447, 76 L.Ed. 815. Decisions involving statutory construction, even decisions which Congress has persuasively declined to overrule, have been overruled here. See Girouard v. United States, 328 U.S. 61, 66 S.Ct. 826, 90 L.Ed. 1084, overruling United States v. Schwimmer, 279 U.S. 644, 49 S.Ct. 448, 73 L.Ed. 889, United States v. Macintosh, 283 U.S. 605, 51 S.Ct. 570, 75 L.Ed. 1302, and United States v. Bland, 283 U.S. 636, 51 S.Ct. 569, 75 L.Ed. 1319; see also Commissioner of Internal Revenue v. Estate of Church, 335 U.S. 632, 69 S.Ct. 322, 337, 93 L.Ed. 288, overruling May v. Heiner, 281 U.S. 238, 50 S.Ct. 286, 74 L.Ed. 826.

And with regard to the Civil Rights Acts there are reasons of particular urgency which authorize the Court—indeed, which make it the Court's responsibility—to reappraise in the hitherto skimpily considered context of R.S. § 1979 what was decided in Classic, Screws and Williams. This is not an area of commercial law in which, presumably, individuals may have arranged their affairs in reliance on the expected stability of decision. Compare National Bank of Genesee v. Whitney, 103 U.S. 99, 26 L.Ed. 443; Vail v. Territory of Arizona, 207 U.S. 201, 28 S.Ct. 107, 52 L.Ed. 169; Walling v. Halliburton Oil Well Cementing Co., 331 U.S. 17, 67 S.Ct. 1056, 91 L.Ed. 1312; United States v. South Buffalo R. Co., 333 U.S. 771, 68 S.Ct. 868, 92 L.Ed. 1077. Nor is it merely a minerun statutory question involving a narrow compass of individual rights and duties. The issue in the present case concerns directly a basic problem of American federalism: the relation of the Nation to the States in the critically important sphere of municipal law administration. In this aspect, it has significance approximating constitutional dimension. Necessarily, the construction of the Civil Rights Acts raises issues fundamental to our institutions. This imposes on this Court a corresponding obligation to exercise its power within the fair limits of its judicial discretion. 'We recognize that stare decisis embodies an important social policy. It represents an element of continuity in law, and is rooted in the psychologic need to satisfy reasonable expectations. But stare decisis is a principle of policy and not a mechanical formula of adherence to the latest decision, however recent and questionable * * *.' Helvering v. Hallock, 309 U.S. 106, 119, 60 S.Ct. 444, 451, 84 L.Ed. 604.

Now, while invoking the prior decisions which have given 'under color of (law)' a content that ignores the meaning fairly comported by the words of the text and confirmed by the legislative history, the Court undertakes a fresh examination of that legislative history. The decision in this case, therefore, does not rest on stare decisis, and the true construction of the statute may be thought to be as free from the restraints of that doctrine as though the matter were before us for the first time. Certainly, none of the implications which the Court seeks to draw from silences in the minority reports of congressional committees in 1956, 1957, and 1960, or from the use of 'under color' language in the very different context of the Act of May 6, 1960, 74 Stat. 86, 42 U.S.C.A. § 1974 et seq.—concerned, in relevant part, with the preservation of election records and with the implementation of the franchise—serves as an impressive bar to re-examination of the true scope of R.S. § 1979 itself in its pertinent legislative setting.32

This case squarely presents the question whether the intrusion of a city policeman for which that policeman can show no such authority at state law as could be successfully interposed in defense to a state-law action against him, is nonetheless to be regarded as 'under color' of state authority within the meaning of R.S. § 1979. Respondents, in breaking into the Monroe apartment, violated the laws of the State of Illinois.33 Illinois law appears to offer a civil remedy for unlawful searches;34 petitioners do not claim that none is available. Rather they assert that they have been deprived of due process of law and of equal protection of the laws under color of state law, although from all that appears the courts of Illinois are available to give them the fullest redress which the common law affords for the violence done them, nor does any 'statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage' of the State of Illinois bar that redress. Did the enactment by Congress of § 1 of the Ku Klux Act of 1871 encompass such a situation?

That section, it has been noted, was patterned on the similar criminal provision of § 2, Act of April 9, 1866. The earlier Act had as its primary object the effective nullification of the Black Codes, those statutes of the Southern legislatures which had so burdened and disqualified the Negro as to make his emancipation appear illusory.35 The Act had been vetoed by President Johnson, whose veto message describes contemporary understanding of its second section; the section, he wrote,

'seems to be designed to apply to some existing or future law of a State or Territory which may conflict with the provisions of the bill * * *. It provides for counteracting such forbidden legislation by imposing fine and imprisonment upon the legislators who may pass such conflicting laws, or upon the officers or agents who shall put, or attempt to put, them into execution. It means an official offense, not a common crime committed against law upon the persons or property of the black race. Such an act may deprive the black man of his property, but not of the right to hold property. It means a deprivation of the right itself, either by the State judiciary or the State Legislature.'36

And Senator Trumbull, then Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee,37 in his remarks urging its passage over the veto, expressed the intendment of the second section as those who voted for it read it:

'If an offense is committed against a colored person simply because he is colored, in a State where the law affords him the same protection as if he were white, this act neither has nor was intended to have anything to do with his case, because he has adequate remedies in the State courts; but if he is discriminated against under color of State laws because he is colored, then it becomes necessary to interfere for his protection.'38

Section 2 of the 1866 Act was re-enacted in substance in 1870 as part of 'An Act to enforce the Right of Citizens * * * to vote in the several States * * *,' 16 Stat. 140, 144. The following colloquy on that occasion is particularly revealing:

'MR. SHERMAN. * * * My colleague cannot deny that we can by appropriate legislation prevent any private person from shielding himself under a State regulation, and thus denying to a person the right to vote * * *.

'MR. CASSERLY. I should like to ask the Senator from Ohio how a State can be said to abridge the right of a colored man to vote when some irresponsible person in the streets is the actor in that wrong?

'MR. SHERMAN. If the offender, who may be a loafer, the meanest man in the streets, covers himself under the protection or color of a law or regulation or constitution of a State, he may be punished for doing it.

'MR. CASSERLY. Suppose the State law authorizes the colored man to vote; what then?

'MR. SHERMAN. That is not the case with which we are dealing. * * * This bill only proposes to deal with offenses committe