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Section 1983 Civil Rights Claim

The federal statute allowing someone to sue a state or local official personally for violating their constitutional rights.

Informational only - this is not legal advice. These definitions explain general legal vocabulary in plain English. They are not advice about your situation, reading them creates no attorney-client relationship, and the law differs from state to state and changes over time. For advice you can rely on, speak to a lawyer licensed in your state.

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What it means

Section 1983 is the vehicle for most constitutional claims against state and local government in the United States. It creates no rights of its own; it provides a way to enforce rights that already exist under the Constitution or federal law, against a person acting under colour of state law - a police officer, a corrections officer, a school or county official.

Two features shape almost every case. The defendant must have been acting under state authority, which is what separates these claims from ordinary disputes between private parties. And a local government body is not liable simply because it employed the person: liability attaches where the violation followed an official policy, a custom, or a failure to train amounting to deliberate indifference, rather than on the ordinary employer-liability principle people expect.

The defence that decides many of these cases is qualified immunity, which protects an official unless the right violated was clearly established at the time in a way a reasonable official would have understood. It is frequently resolved before trial, and it is the reason two cases with similar facts can end very differently.

Where this comes from

42 U.S.C. § 1983, with attorney's fees for a prevailing party under 42 U.S.C. § 1988. Municipal liability comes from Monell v. Department of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658 (1978); qualified immunity from a line of Supreme Court decisions including Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800 (1982). Claims against federal officers proceed on a different and considerably narrower footing, and claims against state governments themselves are constrained by state sovereign immunity.

When people hire a lawyer for this

These are specialist claims and the reasons to get advice early are evidentiary rather than tactical: body-camera footage, incident reports and dispatch records are retained under agency schedules that can be short, and a preservation request made early is sometimes the difference between a provable claim and an unprovable one. Notice requirements for claims against public bodies are also strict and separate from anything else - and they can be very much shorter than people expect.

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Related terms

Other entries in the same area of law, each written from the same primary sources.

ADA Public Accommodations (Title III)The part of the Americans with Disabilities Act that applies to businesses open to the public - shops, restaurants, hotels, clinics, theatres, and in many courts their websites - requiring access, policy changes and communication aids, with the cost limits that shape what can be demanded.
Disparate ImpactDiscrimination without a discriminatory intent - a neutral rule, test or practice that falls much harder on a protected group and cannot be justified by business necessity - and the statutes under which that theory is and is not available.
Excessive ForceThe constitutional limit on how much force police may use in a stop, an arrest or a search - judged by what a reasonable officer would have done in the moment, and the reason body-camera footage decides more of these cases than testimony does.
False Arrest and Malicious ProsecutionThe claims available to a person detained without probable cause or prosecuted without it - the state torts, their constitutional counterparts, and the favourable-termination rule that decides when a malicious-prosecution claim can be brought at all.
Filing a Discrimination Charge (EEOC)The administrative step that must come before almost any federal employment-discrimination lawsuit - a charge filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or a state agency within a short statutory window, followed by a right-to-sue letter that starts the next clock.
Housing Discrimination (Fair Housing Act)The federal law making it unlawful to refuse housing, or set different terms, because of who someone is.
Prisoners' Rights and the Prison Litigation Reform ActThe constitutional protections that survive incarceration - against cruel and unusual conditions, deliberate indifference to medical needs, and punishment without process - and the federal statute that makes a prisoner exhaust the prison's own grievance system before any of them can be enforced in court.
Reasonable AccommodationA change to a job, workplace or housing rule that lets a person with a disability participate equally - required unless it imposes undue hardship.
Religious Freedom (RFRA and RLUIPA)The federal statutes that require government to justify any substantial burden on religious exercise by a compelling interest pursued in the least restrictive way - stronger than the constitutional rule, and the basis of most modern religious-liberty claims by prisoners, congregations and employers.
Retaliation for Protected ActivityThe separate legal wrong of punishing a person for complaining about discrimination, reporting a violation, taking protected leave or helping in an investigation - a claim that often succeeds where the underlying complaint would not.

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Part of the LawyerLand plain-English legal glossary. Definitions are written from primary sources - statutes and court rules - and each entry states the authority it rests on, or says plainly when the doctrine is state law with no national rule.

If you cannot afford a lawyer, civil legal aid programmes provide free help with many of these problems: civil legal aid programmes by state.

Related free reference tools: statute of limitations for a personal-injury claim, by state, quoted from each state's official text - part of LawyerLand's legal reference tools.