The Supreme Court has agreed to decide in its coming term whether states themselves can be sued for damages under the law. The law permits suits by anyone whose Federal constitutional or legal rights have been violated by a public official or agency acting by authority of state law: a state or local official, a local governmental body, a county, a school board. A 117-year-old Federal civil rights law, passed by a Reconstruction era Congress to protect former slaves from maltreatment by local officials, is becoming an ever more powerful tool for challenging a widening array of official actions that have nothing to do with race, from zoning decisions to bar admission requirements to state insurance laws.Īmong the plaintiffs that have recently invoked the Civil Rights Act of 1871 to take their complaints to Federal court are: a company that collects garbage in northern Westchester County Southern Methodist University cheerleaders the coach of the basketball team at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas a 19-year-old child prodigy turned lawyer a divorced father seeking his children's school records.

The act of 1871