## Facts

- Delaware created the Wilmington Parking Authority (Authority), a state agency, to build and operate public parking facilities.
- The Authority constructed the Midtown Parking Center with public funds and revenue bonds and owned and operated the building for public purposes.
- To support the facility financially, the Authority included commercial storefronts and leased one space to Eagle Coffee Shoppe, Inc. (Eagle) under a long-term lease.
- Eagle refused to serve William H. Burton, a Black customer, solely because of his race.
- The lease did not require nondiscriminatory service, and state law did not impose a general duty on restaurants to serve all comers.
- Burton sought declaratory and injunctive relief against both Eagle and the Authority, arguing the exclusion violated the Fourteenth Amendment because it was attributable to the State.

## Issues

1. Whether a private restaurant’s racial discrimination is “state action” when the restaurant leases premises in, and is physically and financially integrated with, a publicly owned and operated facility.
2. Whether the State’s failure, through its agency, to prohibit discrimination in the lease and continued support of the enterprise makes the State a joint participant in the discriminatory conduct.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court dismissed the appeal for want of jurisdiction but treated the papers as a petition for certiorari, granted certiorari, and reached the merits.
- The Court reversed the state judgment.
- It held that, in the circumstances presented, Eagle’s refusal to serve Burton was discriminatory state action violating the Equal Protection Clause.
- The Court concluded the Authority and Eagle were interdependent such that the State was a joint participant in the challenged activity.

## Legal Principles

- State action may be found only by examining the totality of facts and circumstances to determine whether the State’s involvement in ostensibly private conduct is sufficiently close.
- A private entity’s conduct can be attributable to the State where the State, through ownership, financing, and ongoing interdependence, becomes a joint participant in the private enterprise.
- When the State leases public property in a way that makes the private operation an integral part of a public facility serving public purposes, the Fourteenth Amendment’s nondiscrimination requirements apply to the lessee as if written into the lease.
- Governmental inaction can constitute participation when a state agency knowingly permits discrimination in publicly owned premises from which it derives continuing financial and operational benefits.
- The holding is fact-specific and does not make the State responsible for all discriminatory acts by private parties merely because they are licensed, regulated, or receive some governmental benefit.

## Conclusion

Because the restaurant operated within a publicly owned facility under a mutually beneficial, financially interdependent arrangement with a state agency, the State was a joint participant in the enterprise, making the restaurant’s racial exclusion attributable to the State and unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause.


Burton v. Wilmington Parking Auth., 365 U.S. 715 (1961)