Cite as: 503 U. S. 115 (1992)
Opinion of the Court
made it clear that municipalities may not be held liable "unless action pursuant to official municipal policy of some nature caused a constitutional tort." Id., at 691.4 The Court emphasized that
"a municipality cannot be held liable solely because it employs a tortfeasor—or, in other words, a municipality cannot be held liable under § 1983 on a respondeat superior theory.
. . . . . "[T]herefore, . . . a local government may not be sued under § 1983 for an injury inflicted solely by its employees or agents. Instead, it is when execution of a government's policy or custom, whether made by its law-makers or by those whose edicts or acts may fairly be said to represent official policy, inflicts the injury that the government as an entity is responsible under § 1983." Id., at 691, 694 (emphasis in original).
In a series of later cases, the Court has considered whether an alleged injury caused by municipal employees acting under color of state law provided a proper basis for imposing liability on a city. In each of those cases the Court assumed that a constitutional violation had been adequately alleged or proved and focused its attention on the separate issue of municipal liability. Thus, for example, in Oklahoma City v. Tuttle, supra, it was assumed that a police officer had violated the decedent's constitutional rights, but we held that the wrongful conduct of a single officer without any policy-making authority did not establish municipal policy. And in St. Louis v. Praprotnik, 485 U. S. 112 (1988), without reach-4 Petitioners in Monell, a class of female employees of the New York City Department of Social Services and Board of Education, alleged that the board and department violated their due process rights by implementing an official policy that compelled pregnant employees to take unpaid leaves of absences before such leaves were required for medical reasons. 436 U. S., at 660-661.
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