418
Souter, J., dissenting
been violated by an act of the policymaker itself. In this situation, the choice of policy and its implementation are one, and the first or only action will suffice to ground municipal liability simply because it is the very policymaker who is acting. See Pembaur, supra, at 480-481; cf. Newport v. Fact Concerts, Inc., 453 U. S. 247, 250-252 (1981) (implicitly assuming that a policymaker's single act can sustain § 1983 action); Owen v. Independence, 445 U. S. 622, 625-630 (1980) (same). It does not matter that the policymaker may have chosen "a course of action tailored [only] to a particular situation and not intended to control decisions in later situations," Pembaur, 475 U. S., at 481; if the decision to adopt that particular course of action is intentionally made by the authorized policymaker, "it surely represents an act of official government 'policy' " and "the municipality is equally responsible whether that action is to be taken only once or to be taken repeatedly," ibid.
We have, finally, identified a municipal policy in a third situation, even where the policymaker has failed to act affirmatively at all, so long as the need to take some action to control the agents of the government "is so obvious, and the inadequacy [of existing practice] so likely to result in the violation of constitutional rights, that the policymake[r] . . . can reasonably be said to have been deliberately indifferent to the need." Canton v. Harris, 489 U. S. 378, 390 (1989). Where, in the most obvious example, the policymaker sits on his hands after repeated, unlawful acts of subordinate officers and that failure "evidences a 'deliberate indifference' to the rights of [the municipality's] inhabitants," id., at 389, the policymaker's toleration of the subordinates' behavior establishes a policy-in-practice just as readily attributable to the municipality as the one-act policy-in-practice described above. Such a policy choice may be inferred even without a pattern of acts by subordinate officers, so long as the need for action by the policymaker is so obvious that the failure to act rises to deliberate indifference. Id., at 390, n. 10.
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