Converse-1983 is a concept coined by the American law professor Akhil Reed Amar to describe a law that would allow individuals to sue federal officials under state law for damages when those officials violate the U.S. Constitution. The name comes from the existing statute 42 U.S.C. § 1983, which provides that any person acting under state law who deprives someone of federal rights is federally liable to the injured party.

Amar coined the idea in a 1987 Yale Law Journal article entitled "Of Sovereignty and Federalism".^[1] 42 U.S.C. § 1983 allows people to sue state officials for violating federal constitutional rights. Amar's proposal would run this logic in the other direction, suggesting that states pass their own statutes giving people a damages remedy when federal officials violate the federal Constitution. Instead of federal law policing state officers, state law would police federal officers, mirroring § 1983, but inverted along the state–federal axis.^[2]

Amar described converse-1983 as "any statute that would invert § 1983 by providing a general state-law-created cause of action against persons acting unconstitutionally under color of federal law."^[3]

Structurally, Amar read the original design of federalism as allowing states to enforce the federal Constitution against federal officers, not just the other way around.^[4] Proponents of converse-1983 policies view them as addressing gaps in remedies for constitutional violations, especially in the context of the Supreme Court's narrowing of the Bivens doctrine, the judge-made federal counterpart that lets people sue federal officers for constitutional violations.^[5]

This proposal has received renewed attention in response to United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) enforcement activity in 2026.^[6][7] California, Maine, Massachusetts, and New Jersey already have something like a converse-1983 on the books, and it has been proposed by 15 other states in just as many months of the second Trump presidency.^[8][9]