Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/185

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Cite as: 502 U. S. 21 (1991)

27

Opinion of the Court

allows the construction Hafer suggests, however, we now eliminate that ambiguity. A Will itself makes clear that the distinction between officialcapacity suits and personal-capacity suits is more than “a mere pleading device.” Ibid. State officers sued for damages in their official capacity are not “persons” for purposes of the suit because they assume the identity of the government that employs them. Ibid. By contrast, officers sued in their personal capacity come to court as individuals. A government official in the role of personal-capacity defendant thus fits comfortably within the statutory term “person.” Cf. id., at 71, n. 10 (“[A] state official in his or her official capacity, when sued for injunctive relief, would be a person under § 1983 because ‘official-capacity actions for prospective relief are not treated as actions against the State’ ”) (quoting Graham, 473 U. S., at 167, n. 14). Hafer seeks to overcome the distinction between officialand personal-capacity suits by arguing that § 1983 liability turns not on the capacity in which state officials are sued, but on the capacity in which they acted when injuring the plaintiff. Under Will, she asserts, state officials may not be held liable in their personal capacity for actions they take in their official capacity. Although one Court of Appeals has endorsed this view, see Cowan v. University of Louisville School of Medicine, 900 F. 2d 936, 942–943 (CA6 1990), we find it both unpersuasive as an interpretation of § 1983 and foreclosed by our prior decisions. Through § 1983, Congress sought “to give a remedy to parties deprived of constitutional rights, privileges and immunities by an official’s abuse of his position.” Monroe v. Pape, 365 U. S. 167, 172 (1961). Accordingly, it authorized suits to redress deprivations of civil rights by persons acting “under color of any [state] statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage.” 42 U. S. C. § 1983. The requirement of action under color of state law means that Hafer may be liable for