Rendell-Baker v. Kohn

In Rendell-Baker v. Kohn (1982), the U.S. Supreme Court decided that actions of administrators in discharging teachers at a private school that provided mandatory services to maladjusted students did not rise to the level of a “state action,” regardless of the amount of state (or more properly “commonwealth,” since Massachusetts is not a state) and federal funding the school received. In a companion case that did not arise in a school setting, Blum v. Yaretsky (1982), the Court similarly ruled that when hospital staff transferred patients from one level of care to another, lower level, there was no state action involved. In both cases, since the alleged wrongdoings did not rise to the level of state actions, the Court found that the aggrieved parties were ...