Cite as: 531 U. S. 288 (2001)
Opinion of the Court
II
A
Our cases try to plot a line between state action subject to Fourteenth Amendment scrutiny and private conduct (however exceptionable) that is not. Tarkanian, supra, at 191; Jackson v. Metropolitan Edison Co., 419 U. S. 345, 349 (1974). The judicial obligation is not only to " 'preserv[e] an area of individual freedom by limiting the reach of federal law' and avoi[d] the imposition of responsibility on a State for conduct it could not control," Tarkanian, supra, at 191 (quoting Lugar, supra, at 936-937), but also to assure that constitutional standards are invoked "when it can be said that the State is responsible for the specific conduct of which the plaintiff complains," Blum, supra, at 1004 (emphasis in original). If the Fourteenth Amendment is not to be displaced, therefore, its ambit cannot be a simple line between States and people operating outside formally governmental organizations, and the deed of an ostensibly private organization or individual is to be treated sometimes as if a State had caused it to be performed. Thus, we say that state action may be found if, though only if, there is such a "close nexus between the State and the challenged action" that seemingly private behavior "may be fairly treated as that of the State itself." Jackson, supra, at 351.2
What is fairly attributable is a matter of normative judgment, and the criteria lack rigid simplicity. From the range of circumstances that could point toward the State behind an individual face, no one fact can function as a necessary condition across the board for finding state action; nor is any set of circumstances absolutely sufficient, for there may be some
scholastic Athletic League, 572 F. 2d 121, 125 (CA3 1978) (state action conceded).
2 If a defendant's conduct satisfies the state-action requirement of the Fourteenth Amendment, the conduct also constitutes action "under color of state law" for § 1983 purposes. Lugar v. Edmondson Oil Co., 457 U. S. 922, 935 (1982).
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