Dillon's Rule Under the Burger Court: The Municipal Liability Cases

Abstract

Under the Burger Court, the constitutional relationship between states and their municipalities has been examined primarily in cases involving private suits initiated against municipalities under federal antitrust and civil rights statutes. Since the Court's 1943 Parker v. Brown decision, it had been presumed that municipalities as political subdivisions of states were as immune as their states from tort liability under the Sherman Antitrust Act. The Burger Court, however, ruled that municipalities are not automatically immunized from tort liability simply because of their status as political subdivisions unless they can demonstrate that their actions were undertaken pursuant to an expressed state policy. After 1980, the Court continued to uphold the vulnerability of municipalities to private suits authorized by federal statutes, but moved to narrow the types of remedy appropriate under common law. The Burger Court did not, therefore, address the more fundamental question of whether municipalities as public actors should be liable to private damages in the course of their public functions.