Thomas, J., dissenting
when “the State’s alleged failure to provide Reed with a fundamentally fair process was complete.” Ante, at 5. Given this understanding of Reed’s claim, the “[i]mportan[t]” proposition with which the majority begins its analysis is doctrinally irrelevant. Ibid.
After that red herring, the majority engages in an obvious equivocation, conflating the Chapter 64 “process” that Reed challenges as “fundamentally unfair” with the Texas courts’ generally applicable decisional procedures. Ibid. But of course, those procedures are not what Reed challenges. Instead (and, again, exactly like the arguments in his prior certiorari petition), his due process claim “ ‘targets as unconstitutional’ ” the substantive requirements of Chapter 64 as construed. Ante, at 4. His claim plainly would be no different if the CCA did not entertain rehearing motions.
Still, the majority’s confused accrual reasoning is useful for the added light that it shines on Reed’s jurisdictional problems. As the majority says, a procedural due process claim has two elements: (1) a deprivation and (2) inadequate process. The majority then acknowledges that the state courts effectuated Reed’s deprivation, and it treats the state courts’ ordinary decisional mechanics as the allegedly inadequate process. But, after both elements of Reed’s claim are thus laid at the feet of the state courts, what role is left for the nominal defendant here, the district attorney? What part did he play in violating Reed’s procedural due process rights, and what makes him a proper defendant to Reed’s §1983 claim?
The majority has no answer. At bottom, its approval of Reed’s claim is intelligible only upon the supposition that the district attorney may be sued as a mere stand-in for the State as a whole, such that Reed can urge against him the due process violations that the State allegedly committed through its courts. That is a profound mistake. True, the district attorney and the CCA are both state actors. But, States act in different ways through their different entities
