502
Souter, J., concurring in judgment
release from state custody. If it were correct to say that § 1983 independently requires a person not in custody to establish the prior invalidation of his conviction, it would have been equally right to tell the former slave that he could not seek federal relief even against the law-enforcement officers who framed him unless he first managed to convince the state courts that his conviction was unlawful. That would be a result hard indeed to reconcile either with the purpose of § 1983 or with the origins of what was "popularly known as the Ku Klux Act," Collins v. Hardyman, 341 U. S. 651, 657 (1951), the statute having been enacted in part out of concern that many state courts were "in league with those who were bent upon abrogation of federally protected rights," Mitchum v. Foster, supra, at 240; cf. Cong. Globe, 42d Cong., 1st Sess., 577 (1871) (Sen. Trumbull explaining that, under the Civil Rights Act of 1871, "the Federal Government has a right to set aside . . . action of the State authorities" that deprives a person of his Fourteenth Amendment rights). It would also be a result unjustified by the habeas statute or any other post-§ 1983 enactment.
Nor do I see any policy reflected in a congressional enactment that would justify denying to an individual today federal damages (a significantly less disruptive remedy than an order compelling release from custody) merely because he was unconstitutionally fined by a State, or to a person who discovers after his release from prison that, for example, state officials deliberately withheld exculpatory material. And absent such a statutory policy, surely the common law can give us no authority to narrow the "broad language" of § 1983, which speaks of deprivations of "any" constitutional rights, privileges, or immunities, by "[e]very" person acting under color of state law, and to which "we have given full effect [by] recognizing that § 1983 'provide[s] a remedy, to be broadly construed, against all forms of official violation of federally protected rights.' " Dennis v. Higgins, 498 U. S. 439, 443, 445 (1991) (quoting Monell v. New York City Dept. of Social Servs., 436 U. S. 658, 700-701 (1978)).
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