Flagg Bros., Inc. v. Brooks

436 U.S. 149, 98 S. Ct. 1729, 56 L. Ed. 2d 185, 1978 U.S. LEXIS 90, 23 U.C.C. Rep. Serv. (West) 1105

Opinions

Mr. Justice Rehnquist

delivered the opinion of the Court.

The question presented by this litigation is whether a warehouseman's proposed sale of goods entrusted to him for storage, as permitted by New York Uniform Commercial Code § 7-210 (McKinney 1964) ,¹ is an action properly attributable to the State of New York. The District Court found that the warehouseman’s conduct was not that of the State, and dismissed this suit for want of jurisdiction under 28 U. S. C. (3). 404 F. Supp. 1059 (SDNY 1975). The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in reversing the judgment of the District Court, found sufficient state involvement with the proposed sale to invoke the provisions of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. 553 F. 2d 764 (1977). We agree with the District Court, and we therefore reverse.

I

According to her complaint, the allegations of which we must accept as true, respondent Shirley Brooks and her family were evicted from their apartment in Mount Vernon, N. Y., on June 13, 1973. The city marshal arranged for Brooks’ possessions to be stored by petitioner Flagg Brothers, Inc., in its warehouse. Brooks was informed of the cost of moving and storage, and she instructed the workmen to proceed, although she found the price too high. On August 25, 1973, after a series of disputes over the validity of the charges being claimed by petitioner Flagg Brothers, Brooks received a letter demanding that her account be brought up to date within 10 days “or your furniture will be sold.” App. 13a. A series of subsequent letters from respondent and her attorneys produced no satisfaction.

Brooks thereupon initiated this class action in the District Court under 42 U. S. C. § 1983, seeking damages, an injunction against the threatened sale of her belongings, and the declaration that such a sale pursuant to § 7-210 would violate the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. She was later joined in her action by Gloria Jones, another resident of Mount Vernon whose goods had been stored by Flagg Brothers following her eviction. The American Warehousemen’s Association and the International Association of Refrigerated Warehouses, Inc., moved to intervene as defendants, as did the Attorney General of New York and others seeking to defend the constitutionality of the challenged statute.² On July 7, 1975, the District Court, relying primarily on our decision in Jackson v. Metropolitan Edison Co., 419 U. S. 345 (1974), dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim for relief under § 1983.

A divided panel of the Court of Appeals reversed.³ The majority noted that Jackson had suggested that state action might be found in the exercise by a private party of “ ‘some - / power delegated to it by the State which is traditionally associated with sovereignty;’ ” 553 F. 2d, at 770, quoting 419 U. S., at 353. The majority found:

“[B]y enacting § 7-210, New York not only delegated to the warehouseman a portion of its sovereign monopoly power over binding conflict resolution [citations omitted], but also let him, by selling stored goods, execute a lien and thus perform a function which has traditionally been that of the sheriff.” 553 F. 2d, at 771.

The court, although recognizing that the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit had reached a contrary conclusion in dealing with an identical California statute in Melara v. Kennedy, 541 F. 2d 802 (1976), concluded that this delegation of power constituted sufficient state action to support federal jurisdiction under 28 U. S. C. § 1343 (3). The dissenting judge found the reasoning of Melara persuasive.

We granted certiorari, 434 U. S. 817, to resolve the conflict over this provision of the Uniform Commercial Code, in effect in 49 States and the District of Columbia, and to address the important question it presents concerning the meaning of “state action” as that term is associated with the Fourteenth Amendment.⁴

II

A claim upon which relief may be granted to respondents against Flagg Brothers under § 1983 must embody at least two elements. Respondents are first bound to show that they have been deprived of a right “secured by the Constitution and the laws” of the United States. They must secondly show that Flagg Brothers deprived them of this right acting “under color of any statute” of the State of New York. It is clear that these two elements denote two separate areas of inquiry. Adickes v. S. H. Kress & Co., 398 U. S. 144, 150 (1970).

Respondents allege in their complaints that “the threatened sale of the goods pursuant to New York Uniform Commercial Code § 7-210” is an action under color of state law. App. 14a, 47a. We have previously noted, with respect to a private individual, that “[wjhatever else may also be necessary to show that a person has acted 'under color of [a] statute’ for purposes of § 1983, ... we think it essential that he act with the knowledge of and pursuant to that statute.” Adickes, supra, at 162 n. 23. Certainly, the complaints can be fairly read to allege such knowledge on the part of Flagg Brothers. However, we need not determine whether any further showing is necessary, since it is apparent that neither respondent has alleged facts which constitute a deprivation of any right “secured by the Constitution and laws” of the United States.

A moment’s reflection will clarify the essential distinction between the two elements of a § 1983 action. Some rights established either by the Constitution or by federal law are protected from both governmental and private deprivation. See, e. g., Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., 392 U. S. 409, 422-424 (1968) (discussing 42 U. S. C. § 1982). ' Although a private person may cause a deprivation of such a right, he may be subjected to liability under § 1983 only when he does so under color of law. Cf. 392 U. S., at 424-425, and n. 33. However, most rights secured by the Constitution are protected only against infringement by governments. See, e. g., Jackson, 419 U. S., at 349; Civil Rights Cases, 109 U. S. 3, 17-18 (1883). Here, respondents allege that Flagg Brothers has deprived them of their right, secured by the Fourteenth Amendment, to be free from state deprivations of property without due process of law. Thus, they must establish not only that Flagg Brothers acted under color of the challenged statute, but also that its actions are properly attributable to the State of New York.

It must be noted that respondents have named no public officials as defendants in this action. The city marshal, who supervised their evictions, was dismissed from the case by the consent of all the parties.⁵ This total absence of overt official involvement plainly distinguishes this case from earlier decisions imposing procedural restrictions on creditors’ remedies such as North Georgia Finishing, Inc. v. Di-Chem, Inc., 419 U. S. 601 (1975); Fuentes v. Shevin, 407 U. S. 67 (1972); Sniadach v. Family Finance Corp., 395 U. S. 337 (1969). In those cases, the Court was careful to point out that the dictates of the Due Process Clause “attac[h] only to the deprivation of an interest encompassed within the Fourteenth Amendment’s protection.” Fuentes, supra, at 84. While as a factual matter any person with sufficient physical power may deprive a person of his property, only a State or a private person whose action “may be fairly treated as that of the State itself,” Jackson, supra, at 351, may deprive him of “an interest encompassed within the Fourteenth Amendment’s protection,” Fuentes, supra, at 84. Thus, the only issue presented by this case is whether Flagg Brothers’ action may fairly be attributed to the State of New York. We conclude that it may not.

Ill

Respondents’ primary contention is that New York has delegated to Flagg Brothers a power “traditionally exclusively reserved to the State.” Jackson, supra, at 352. They argue that the resolution of private disputes is a traditional function of civil government, and that the State in § 7-210 has delegated this function to Flagg Brothers. Respondents, however, have read too much into the language of our previous cases. While many functions have been traditionally performed by governments, very few have been “exclusively reserved to the State.”

One such area has been elections. While the Constitution protects private rights of association and advocacy with regard to the election of public officials, our cases make it clear that the conduct of the elections themselves is an exclusively public function. This principle was established by a series of cases challenging the exclusion of blacks from participation in primary elections in Texas. Terry v. Adams, 345 U. S. 461 (1953); Smith v. Allwright, 321 U. S. 649 (1944); Nixon v. Condon, 286 U. S. 73 (1932). Although the rationale of these cases may be subject to some dispute,⁶ their scope is carefully defined. The doctrine does not reach to all forms of private political activity, but encompasses only state-regulated elections or- elections conducted by organizations which in practice produce “the uncontested choice of public officials.” Terry, supra, at 484 (Clark, J., concurring). As Mr. Justice Black described the situation in Terry, supra, at 469: “The only election that has counted in this Texas county for more than fifty years has been that held by the Jaybirds from which Negroes were excluded.” ⁷

A second line of cases under the public-function doctrine originated with Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U. S. 501 (1946). Just as the Texas Democratic Party in Smith and the Jaybird Democratic Association in Terry effectively performed the entire public function of selecting public officials, so too the Gulf Shipbuilding Corp. performed all the necessary municipal functions in the town of Chickasaw, Ala., which it owned. Under those circumstances, the Court concluded it was bound to recognize the right of a group of Jehovah's Witnesses to distribute religious literature on its streets. The Court expanded this municipal-function theory in Food Employees v. Logan Valley Plaza, Inc., 391 U. S. 308 (1968), to encompass the activities of a private shopping center. It did so over the vigorous dissent of Mr. Justice Black, the author of Marsh. As he described the basis of the Marsh decision:

“The question is, Under what circumstances can private property be treated as though it were public? The answer that Marsh gives is when that property has taken on all the attributes of a town, i. e., 'residential buildings, streets, a system of sewers, a sewage disposal plant and a “business block” on which business places are situated. 326 U. S., at 502.” 391 U. S., at 332 (dissenting opinion).

This Court ultimately adopted Mr. Justice Black's interpretation of the limited reach of Marsh in Hudgens v. NLRB, 424 U. S. 507 (1976), in which it announced the overruling of Logan Valley.

These two branches of the public-function doctrine have in common the feature of exclusivity.⁸ Although the elections held by the Democratic Party and its affiliates were the only meaningful elections in Texas, and the streets owned by the Gulf Shipbuilding Corp. were the only streets in Chickasaw, the proposed sale by Flagg Brothers under § 7-21Ó is not the only means of resolving this purely private dispute. Respondent Brooks has never alleged that state law barred her from seeking a waiver of Flagg Brothers' right to sell her goods at the time she authorized their storage. Presumably, respondent Jones, who alleges that she never authorized the storage of her goods, could have sought to replevy her goods at any time under state law. See N. Y. Civ. Prac. Law § 7101 et seq. (McKinney 1963). The challenged statute itself provides a damages remedy against the warehouseman for violations of its provisions. N. Y. U. C. C. § 7-210 (9) (McKinney 1964). This system of rights and remedies, recognizing the traditional place of private arrangements in ordering relationships in the commercial world,⁹ can hardly be said to have delegated to Flagg Brothers an exclusive prerogative of the sovereign.¹⁰

Whatever the particular remedies available under New York law, we do not consider a more detailed description of them necessary to our conclusion that the settlement of disputes between debtors and creditors is not traditionally an exclusive public function.¹¹ Cf. United States v. Kras, 409 (1973). Creditors and debtors have had available to them historically a far wider number of choices than has one who would be an elected public official, or a member of Jehovah’s Witnesses who wished to distribute literature in Chickasaw", Ala., at the time Marsh was decided. Our analysis requires no parsing of the difference between various commercial liens and other remedies to support the conclusion that this entire field of activity is outside the scope of Terry and Marsh.12 This is true whether these commercial rights and remedies are created by statute or decisional law. To rely upon the historical antecedents of a particular practice would result in the constitutional condemnation in one State of a remedy found perfectly permissible in another. Compare Cox Bakeries v. Timm Moving & Storage, 554 F. 2d 356, 358-359 (CA8 1977), with Melara, 541 F. 2d, at 805-806, and n. 7. Cf. Bell v. Maryland, 378 U. S. 226, 334-335 (1964) (Black, J., dissenting).¹³

Thus, even if we were inclined to extend the sovereign-function doctrine outside of its present carefully confined bounds, the field of private commercial transactions would be a particularly inappropriate area into which to expand it. We conclude that our sovereign-function cases do not support a finding of state action here.

Our holding today impairs in no way the precedential value of such cases as Norwood v. Harrison, 413 U. S. 455 (1973), or Gilmore v. City of Montgomery, 417 U. S. 556 (1974), which arose in the context of state and municipal programs which benefited private schools engaging in racially discriminatory admissions practices following judicial decrees desegregating public school systems. And we would be remiss if we did not note that there are a number of state and municipal functions not covered by our election cases or governed by the reasoning of Marsh which have been administered with a greater degree of exclusivity by States and municipalities than has the function of so-called “dispute resolution.” Among these are such functions as education, fire and police protection, and tax collection.¹⁴ We express no view as to the extent, if any, to which a city or State might be free to delegate to private parties the performance of such functions and thereby avoid the strictures of the Fourteenth Amendment. The mere recitation of these possible permutations and combinations of factual situations suffices to caution us that their resolution should abide the necessity of deciding them.

IV

Respondents further urge that Flagg Brothers’ proposed action is properly attributable to the State because the State has authorized and encouraged it in enacting § 7-210. Our cases state “that a State is responsible for the . . . act of a private party when the State, by its law, has compelled the act.” Adickes, 398 U. S., at 170. This Court, however, has never held that a State’s mere acquiescence in a private action converts that action into that of the State. The Court rejected a similar argument in Jackson, 419 U. S., at 357:

“Approval by a state utility commission of such a request from a regulated utility, where the commission has not put its own weight on the side of the proposed practice by ordering it, does not transmute a practice initiated by the utility and approved by the commission into 'state action.’.” (Emphasis added.)

The clearest demonstration of this distinction appears in Moose Lodge No. 107 v. Irvis, 407 U. S. 163 (1972), which held that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, although not responsible for racial discrimination voluntarily practiced by a private club, could not by law require the club to- comply with its own discriminatory rules. These cases clearly rejected the notion that our prior cases permitted the imposition of Fourteenth Amendment restraints on private action by the simple device of characterizing the State’s inaction as “authorization” or “encouragement.” See id., at 190 (Brennan, J., dissenting).

It is quite immaterial that the State has embodied its decision not to act in statutory form. If New York had no commercial statutes at all, its courts would still be faced with the decision whether to prohibit or to permit the sort of sale threatened here the first time an aggrieved bailor came before them for relief. A judicial decision to deny relief would be no less an “authorization” or “encouragement” • of that sale than the legislature’s decision embodied in this statute. It was recognized in the earliest interpretations of the Fourteenth Amendment “that a State may act through different agencies, — either by its legislative, its executive, or its judicial authorities; and the prohibitions of the amendment extend to all action of the State” infringing rights protected thereby. Virginia v. Rives, 100 U. S. 313, 318 (1880). If the mere denial of judicial relief is considered sufficient encouragement to make the State responsible for those private acts, all private deprivations of property would be converted into public acts whenever the State, for whatever reason, denies relief sought by the putative property owner.

Not only is this notion completely contrary to that “essential dichotomy,” Jackson, supra, at 349, between public and private acts, but it has been previously rejected by this Court. In Evans v. Abney, 396 U. S. 435, 458 (1970), our Brother Brennan in dissent contended that a Georgia statutory provision authorizing the establishment of trusts for racially restricted parks conferred a “special power” on testators taking advantage of the provision. The Court nevertheless concluded that the State of Georgia was in no way responsible for the purely private choice involved in that case. By the same token, the State of New York is in no way responsible for Flagg Brothers’ decision, a decision which the State in § 7-210 permits but does not compel, to threaten to' sell these respondents’ belongings.

Here, the State of New York has not compelled the sale of a bailor’s goods, but has merely announced the circumstances under which its courts will not interfere with a private sale. Indeed, the crux of respondents’ complaint is not that the State has acted, but that it has refused to act. This statutory refusal to act is no different in principle from an ordinary statute of limitations whereby the State declines to provide a remedy for private deprivations of property after the passage of a given period of time.

We conclude that the allegations of these complaints do not establish a violation of these respondents’ Fourteenth Amendment rights by either petitioner Flagg Brothers or the State of New York. The District Court properly concluded that their complaints failed to state a claim for relief under 42 U. S. C. § 1983. The judgment of the Court of Appeals holding otherwise is Reversed.

Mr. Justice Brennan took no part in the consideration or decision of these cases.

1 The challenged statute reads in full:

“§ 7 — 210. Enforcement of Warehouseman’s Lien

“(1) Except as provided in subsection (2), a warehouseman’s lien may be enforced by public or private sale of the goods in bloc or in parcels, at any time or place and on any terms which are commercially reasonable, after notifying all persons known to claim an interest in the goods. Such notification must include a statement of the amount due, the nature of the proposed sale and the time and place of any public sale. The fact that a better price could have been obtained by a sale at a different time or in a different method from that selected by the warehouseman is not of itself sufficient to establish that the sale was not made in a commercially reasonable manner. If the warehouseman either sells the goods in the usual manner in any recognized market therefor, or if he sells at the price current in such market at the time of his sale, or if he has otherwise sold in conformity with commercially reasonable practices among dealers in the type of goods sold, he has sold in a commercially reasonable manner. A sale of more goods than apparently necessary to be offered to insure satisfaction of the obligation is not commercially reasonable except in cases covered by the preceding sentence.

“(2) A warehouseman’s lien on goods other than goods stored by a merchant in the course of his business may be enforced only as follows:

“(a) All persons known to claim an interest in the goods must be notified.

“(b) The notification must be delivered in person or sent by registered or certified letter to the last known address of any person to be notified.

“(c) The notification must include an itemized statement of the claim, a description of the goods subject to the lien, a demand for payment within a specified time not less than ten days after receipt of the notification, and a conspicuous statement that unless the claim is paid within that time the goods will be advertised for sale and sold by auction at a specified time and place.

“(d) The sale must conform to the terms of the notification.

“(e) The sale must be held at the nearest suitable place to that where the goods are held or stored.

“ (f) After the expiration of the time given in the notification, an advertisement of the sale must be published onoe a week for two weeks consecutively in a newspaper of general circulation where the sale is to be held. The advertisement must include a description of the goods, the name of the person on whose account they are being held, and the time and place of the sale. The sale must take place at least fifteen days after the first publication. If there is no newspaper of general circulation where the sale is to be held, the advertisement must be posted at least ten days before the sale in not less than six conspicuous places in the neighborhood of the proposed sale.

“(3) Before any sale pursuant to this section any person claiming a right in the goods may pay the amount necessary to satisfy the lien and the reasonable expenses incurred under this section. In that event the goods must not be sold, but must be retained by the warehouseman subject to the terms of the receipt and this Article.

“(4) The warehouseman may buy at any public sale pursuant to this section.

“(5) A purchaser in good faith of goods sold to enforce a warehouseman’s lien takes the goods free of any rights of persons against whom the lien was valid, despite noncomplianoe by the warehouseman with the requirements of this section.

“(6) The warehouseman may satisfy his lien from the proceeds of any sale pursuant to this section but must hold the balance, if any, for delivery on demand to any person to whom he would have been bound to deliver the goods.

“(7) The rights provided by this section shall be in addition to all other rights allowed by law to a creditor against his debtor.

“ (8) Where a lien is on goods stored by a merchant in the course of his business the lien may be enforced in accordance with either subsection (1) or (2).

“(9) The warehouseman is liable for damages caused by failure to comply with the requirements for sale under this section and in case of willful violation is liable for conversion.”

2 In his order granting the motions to intervene, Judge Gurfein noted that respondent Brooks’ goods had been returned to her, but he found that her action had been saved from mootness by her claim for damages. 63 F. R. D. 409, 412 (SDNY 1974). We have no occasion to consider the correctness of that decision, since we have concluded, n. 3, infra, that the claim of respondent Jones remains alive.

3 Jones died prior to the court’s decision. However, the court concluded that, under 42 U. S. C. § 1983, her claim survived for the benefit of her estate, since a comparable claim would survive under applicable New York law. 553 F. 2d, at 768 n. 7. For simplicity, Jones will be referred to as a respondent herein.

The court also noted that Jones had recovered most of her possessions after the District Court’s dismissal of her action. Unlike Brooks, she paid the charges demanded by Flagg Brothers, but did so “only because of alleged threats of sale and the twenty-month detention of the goods.” Ibid.

At this point in the litigation, it is clear that Flagg Brothers has not sold and will not sell the belongings of either respondent. Although injunctive relief against such sale is therefore no longer available, we must reach the merits of the claim if either respondent can demonstrate that she has suffered "monetary damage by reason of the workings of § 7-210. See, e. g., Liner v. Jafco, Inc., 375 U. S. 301, 305-306 (1964). The affidavit submitted with Jones’ complaint alleges that Flagg Brothers charged her an auctioneer’s fee, pursuant to § 7-210 (3), which she has now paid. If she is correct that the warehouseman’s invocation of the statute constitutes a violation by the State itself of the Fourteenth Amendment, she would surely be entitled to recover that fee. We express no opinion as to whether she could prove other damages causally related to the threatened use of the sale provisions.

4 Even if there is “state action,” the ultimate inquiry in a Fourteenth Amendment case is, of course, whether that action constitutes a denial or deprivation by the State of rights that the Amendment protects.

5 Of course, where the defendant is a public official, the two elements of a § 1983 action merge. “The involvement of a state official . . . plainly provides the state action essential to show a direct violation of petitioner's Fourteenth Amendment . . . rights, whether or not the actions of the police were officially authorized, or lawful.” Adickes v. S. H. Kress & Co., 398 U. S. 144, 152 (1970) (citations omitted).

6 Indeed, the majority in Terry produced three separate opinions, none of which commanded a majority of the Court.

7 In construing the public-function doctrine in the election context, the Court has given special consideration to the fact that Congress, in 42 U. S. C. § 1971 (a) (1), has made special provision to protect equal access to the ballot. Terry, 345 U. S., at 468 (opinion of Black, J.); Smith, 321 U. S., at 651. No such congressional pronouncement speaks to the ordinary commercial transaction presented here.

8 Respondents also contend that Evans v. Newton, 382 U. S. 296 (1966), establishes that the operation of a park for recreational purposes is an exclusively public function. We doubt that Newton intended to establish any such broad doctrine in the teeth of the experience of several American entrepreneurs who amassed great fortunes by operating parks for recreational purposes. We think Newton rests on a finding of ordinary state action under extraordinary circumstances. The Court’s opinion emphasizes that the record showed “no change in the municipal maintenance and concern over this facility,” id.., at 301, after the transfer of title to private trustees. That transfer had not been shown to have eliminated the actual involvement of the city in the daily maintenance and care of the park.

9 Unlike the parade of horribles suggested by our Brother Stevens in dissent, post, at 170, this case does not involve state authorization of private breach of the peace.

10 It is undoubtedly true, as our Brother Stevens says in dissent, post, at 169, that “respondents have a property interest in the possessions that the warehouseman proposes to sell.” But that property interest is not a monolithic, abstract concept hovering in the legal stratosphere. It is a bundle of rights in personalty, the metes and bounds of which are determined by the decisional and statutory law of the State of New York. The validity of the property interest in these possessions which respondents previously acquired from some other private person depends on New York law, and the manner in which that same property interest in these same possessions may be lost or transferred to still another private person likewise depends on New York law. It would intolerably broaden, beyond the scope of any of our previous cases, the notion of state action under the Fourteenth Amendment to hold that the mere existence of a body of property law in a State, whether decisional or statutory, itself amounted to “state action” even though no state process or state officials were ever involved in enforcing that body of law.

This situation is clearly distinguishable from cases such as North Georgia Finishing, Inc. v. Di-Chem, Inc., 419 U. S. 601 (1975); Fuentes v. Shevin, 407 U. S. 67 (1972); and Sniadach v. Family Finance Corp., 395 U. S. 337 (1969). In each of those cases a government official participated in the physical deprivation of what had concededly been the constitutional plaintiff’s property under state law before the deprivation occurred. The constitutional protection attaches not because, as in North Georgia Finishing, a clerk issued a ministerial writ out of the court, but because as a result of that writ the property of the debtor was seized and impounded by the affirmative command of the law of Georgia. The creditor in North Georgia Finishing had not simply sought to pursue the collection of his debt by private means permissible under Georgia law; he had invoked the authority of the Georgia court, which in turn had ordered the garnishee not to pay over money which previously had been the property of the debtor. See Virginia v. Rives, 100 U. S. 313, 318 (1880); Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U. S. 1 (1948).

The “consent” inquiry in Fuentes occurred only after the Court had concluded that state action for purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment was supplied by the participation in the seizure on the part of the sheriff. The consent inquiry was directed to whether there had been a waiver of the constitutional right to due process which had been triggered by state deprivation of propertjr. But our Brother Stevens puts the cart before the horse; he concludes that the respondents’ lack of consent to the deprivations triggers affirmative constitutional protections which the State is bound to provide. Thus what was a mere coda to the constitutional analysis in Fuentes becomes the major theme of the dissent.

11 It may well be, as my Brother Stevens’ dissent contends, that “[t]he power to order legally binding surrenders of property and the constitutional restrictions on that power are necessary correlatives in our system.” Post, at 178-179. But here New York, unlike Florida in Fuentes, Georgia in North Georgia Finishing, and Wisconsin in Sniadach, has not ordered respondents to surrender any property whatever. It has merely enacted a statute which provides that a warehouseman conforming to the provisions of the statute may convert his traditional lien into good title. There is no reason whatever to believe that either Flagg Brothers or respondents could not, if they wished, seek resort to the New York courts in order to either compel or prevent the “surrenders of property” to which that dissent refers, and that the compliance of Flagg Brothers with applicable New York property law would be reviewed after customary notice and hearing in such a proceeding.

The fact that such a judicial review of a self-help remedy is seldom encountered bears witness to the important part that such remedies have played in our system of property rights. This is particularly true of the warehouseman’s hen, which is the source of this provision in the Uniform Commercial Code which is the law in 49 States and the District of Columbia. The lien in this case, particularly because it is burdened by procedural constraints and provides for a compensatory remedy and judicial relief against abuse, is not atypical of creditors’ liens historically, whether created by statute or legislatively enacted. The conduct of private actors in relying on the rights established under these liens to resort to self-help remedies does not permit their conduct to be ascribed to the State. Cf. Steele v. Louisville & Nashville R. Co., 323 U. S. 192 (1944); Railway Employees’ Dept. v. Hanson, 351 U. S. 225 (1956).

12 This is not to say that dispute resolution between creditors and debtors involves a category of human affairs that is never subject to constitutional constraints. We merely address the public-function doctrine as respondents would apply it to this case.

Self-help of the type involved in this case is not significantly different from creditor remedies generally, whether created by common law or enacted by legislatures. New York’s statute has done nothing more than authorize (and indeed limit) — without participation by any public official— what Flagg Brothers would tend to do, even in the absence of such authorization, i. e., dispose of respondents’ property in order to free up its valuable storage space. The proposed sale pursuant to the lien in this case is not a significant departure from traditional private arrangements.

13 See also Davis v. Richmond, 512 F. 2d 201, 203 (CA1 1975):

“[W]e are disinclined to decide the issue of state involvement on the basis of whether a particular class of creditor did or did not enjoy the same freedom to act in Elizabethan or Georgian England.”

14 Contrary to MR. Justice SteveNs’ suggestion, post, at 172 n. 8, this Court has never considered the private exercise of traditional police functions. In Griffin v. Maryland, 378 U. S. 130 (1964), the State contended that the deputy sheriff in question had acted only as a private security employee, but this Court specifically found that he “purported to exercise the authority of a deputy sheriff.” Id., at 135. Griffin thus sheds no light on the constitutional status of private police forces, and we express no opinion here.