A plaintiff sues a private insurance company alleging an equal protection violation because burglary insurance rates are higher for residents in one part of a county than in another part due to local crime rates. Will the plaintiff's suit succeed?

• A. No, because equal protection restricts private action only in extremely specific circumstances, none of which are present.
• B. Yes, private discrimination violates the Constitution.
• C. Yes, because the county police are not providing equal protection to residents in that area.
• D. No, because the Fourteenth Amendment applies to the states, not private actors.

Answer: (A)

The main idea is that the Equal Protection Clause generally governs state action, not private conduct. A private insurance company setting rates based on local crime isn’t acting under government authority, so a claim under the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection usually doesn’t apply. Only in a few narrow situations—where a private party is effectively acting as an arm of the government, performing a traditional public function, or where there’s substantial government involvement or coercion—would private discrimination implicate constitutional equal protection.

Here, none of those special circumstances are present. The insurer is a private actor making business decisions, and there’s no indication of government delegation, coercion, or joint action. Therefore, the suit wouldn’t succeed on an equal protection theory.

The other options miss the nuance: private discrimination isn’t automatically a constitutional violation without state action; blaming the county police suggests state action that isn’t linked to the private insurer’s conduct; and while it’s true that the Fourteenth Amendment applies to states, not private actors, the crucial point is that private action isn’t ordinarily constrained by equal protection unless one of those narrow state-action exceptions applies.