Cite as: 601 U. S. ____ (2024) 5 Opinion of the Court “accoun[t] belong[s] to an office, rather than an individual officeholder.” 37 F. 4th, at 1203–1204. These situations, the Sixth Circuit explained, make an official’s social-media activity “ ‘fairly attributable’ ” to the State. Id., at 1204 (quoting Lugar v. Edmondson Oil Co., 457 U. S. 922, 937 (1982)). And it concluded that Freed’s activity was not. The Sixth Circuit’s approach to state action in the socialmedia context differs from that of the Second and Ninth Circuits, which focus less on the connection between the official’s authority and the account and more on whether the account’s appearance and content look official. See, e.g., Garnier v. O’Connor-Ratcliff, 41 F. 4th 1158, 1170–1171 (CA9 2022); Knight First Amdt. Inst. at Columbia Univ. v. Trump, 928 F. 3d 226, 236 (CA2 2019), vacated as moot sub nom. Biden v. Knight First Amdt. Inst. at Columbia Univ., 593 U. S. ___ (2021). We granted certiorari. 598 U. S. ___ (2023). II Section 1983 provides a cause of action against “[e]very person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State” deprives someone of a federal constitutional or statutory right. (Emphasis added.) As its text makes clear, this provision protects against acts attributable to a State, not those of a private person. This limit tracks that of the Fourteenth Amendment, which obligates States to honor the constitutional rights that §1983 protects. §1 (“No State shall . . . nor shall any State deprive . . . ” (emphasis added)); see also Lugar, 457 U. S., at 929 (“[T]he statutory requirement of action ‘under color of state law’ and the ‘state action’ requirement of the Fourteenth Amendment are identical”). The need for governmental action is also explicit in the Free Speech Clause, the guarantee that Lindke invokes in this case. Amdt. 1 (“Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech . . . ” (emphasis added)); see also Manhattan Community Access