[align=left]
Syllabus
Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be NOTE: released, as is being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued.The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader.See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321 .

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
FITZGERALD et vir. BARNSTABLE SCHOOL COMMITTEE et al.
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the first circuit

Argued December 2, 2008—Decided January 21, 2009 No. 07–1125.

Petitioners filed suit against respondents, the local school district’s governing board and superintendent, alleging that their response to allegations of ***ual harassment of petitioners’ daughter by an older student was inadequate, raising claims under, inter alia, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, 20 U. S. C. §1681(a), and 42 U. S. C. §1983 for violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment . Among its rulings, the District Court dismissed the §1983 claim. The First Circuit affirmed, holding that, under this Court’s precedents, Title IX’s implied private remedy was sufficiently comprehensive to preclude the use of §1983 to advance constitutional claims.
Held:
1. Title IX does not preclude a §1983 action alleging unconstitutional gender discrimination in schools. Pp. 4–12.
(a) In Middle*** County Sewerage Authority v. National Sea Clammers Assn., 453 U. S. 1 ; Smith v. Robinson, 468 U. S. 992 ; and Rancho Palos Verdes v. Abrams, 544 U. S. 113 , this Court found that particular statutory enactments precluded §1983 claims where it was established that Congress intended the statute’s remedial scheme to “be the exclusive avenue through which a plaintiff may assert [such] claims,” Smith, supra, at 1009. In determining whether Congress intended for a subsequent statute to preclude the enforcement of a federal right under §1983, the Court has placed primary emphasis on the nature and extent of that statute’s remedial scheme. See Sea Clammers, 453 U. S., at 20. Where the §1983 claim alleges a constitutional violation, a lack of congressional intent to preclude may also be inferred from a comparison of the rights and protections of the other statute and those existing under the Constitution. Pp. 4–7.
(b) In the absence of a comprehensive remedial scheme comparable to those at issue in Sea Clammers, Smith, and Rancho Palos Verdes, and in light of the divergent coverage of Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause, it must be concluded that Title IX was not meant to be an exclusive mechanism for addressing gender discrimination in schools, or a substitute for §1983 suits as a means of enforcing constitutional rights. Pp. 7–12.
(i) Title IX’s only express enforcement mechanism, 20 U. S. C. §1682, is an administrative procedure resulting in the withdrawal of federal funding from noncompliant institutions. This Court has also recognized an implied private right of action, Cannon v. University of Chicago, 441 U. S. 677 , for which both injunctive relief and damages are available, Franklin v. Gwinnett County Public Schools, 503 U. S. 60 . These remedies stand in stark contrast to the “unusually elaborate,” “carefully tailored,” and “restrictive” enforcement schemes of the statutes in Sea Clammers, Smith, and Rancho Palos Verdes. Unlike those statutes, Title IX has no administrative exhaustion requirement and no notice provisions. Plaintiffs can file directly in court under its implied private right of action and can obtain the full range of remedies. Accordingly, parallel and concurrent §1983 claims will neither circumvent required procedures nor allow access to new remedies. Moreover, under Rancho Palos Verdes, “[t]he provision of an express, private means of redress in the statute itself” is a key consideration in determining congressional intent, and “the existence of a more restrictive private remedy for statutory violations has been the dividing line between those cases in which … an action would lie under §1983 and those in which we have held that it would not.” 544 U. S., at 121. Title IX contains no express private remedy, much less a more restrictive one. Pp. 7–9.
(ii) Because Title IX’s protections are narrower in some respects and broader in others than those guaranteed under the Equal Protection Clause, the Court cannot agree with the First Circuit that Congress saw Title IX as the sole means of correcting unconstitutional gender discrimination in schools. Title IX reaches institutions and programs that receive federal funds, 20 U. S. C. §1681(a), which may include nonpublic institutions, §1681(c), but it has consistently been interpreted as not authorizing suit against school officials, teachers, and other individuals. Moreover, while the constitutional provision reaches only state actors, §1983 equal protection claims may be brought against individuals as well as state entities. West v. Atkins, 487 U. S. 42 . And Title IX exempts from its restrictions several activities that may be challenged on constitutional grounds. See, e.g., §1681(a)(5). Even where particular activities and particular defendants are subject to both Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause, the standards for establishing liability may not be wholly congruent. Compare Gebser v. Lago Vista Independent School Dist., 524 U. S. 274 , with Monell v. New York City Dept. of Social Servs., 436 U. S. 658 . Pp. 9–11.
(iii) The Court’s conclusion is consistent with Title IX’s context and history. Because the Congress that enacted Title IX authorized the Attorney General to intervene in private suits alleging *** discrimination violative of the Equal Protection Clause, 42 U. S. C. §2000h–2, Congress must have explicitly envisioned that private plaintiffs would bring constitutional claims to challenge gender discrimination via §1983. Moreover, Title IX was modeled after Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Cannon, supra, at 694–695, and, at the time of Title IX’s 1972 enactment, the lower courts routinely interpreted Title VI to allow for parallel and concurrent §1983 claims. Absent contrary evidence, it follows that Congress intended Title IX to be interpreted similarly to allow for parallel and concurrent §1983 claims. Pp. 11–12.
2. As neither of the courts below addressed the merits of petitioners’ constitutional claims or even the sufficiency of their pleadings, this Court will not do so in the first instance here. Pp. 12–13.
504 F. 3d 165, reversed and remanded.
Alito, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.

Justice Alito, Opinion of the Court
This opinion is subject to formal revision before NOTICE: publication in the preliminary print of the United States Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Reports. Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
LISA FITZGERALD, et vir, PETITIONERS v. BARN-
STABLE SCHOOL COMMITTEE et al.
on writ of certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the first circuit

[January 21, 2009]

Justice Alito delivered the opinion of the Court.
The issue in this case of peer-on-peer ***ual harassment is whether Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, 86 Stat. 373, 20 U. S. C. §1681(a), precludes an action under Rev. Stat. §1979, 42 U. S. C. §1983, alleging unconstitutional gender discrimination in schools. The Court of Appeals for the First Circuit held that it does. 504 F. 3d 165 (2007). We reverse.
I
Because this case comes to us on a motion to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), we assume the truth of the facts as alleged in petitioners’ complaint. During the 2000–2001 school year, the daughter of petitioners Lisa and Robert Fitzgerald was a kindergarten student in the Barnstable, Massachusetts, school system, and rode the bus to school each morning. One day she told her parents that, whenever she wore a dress, a third-grade boy on the school bus would bully her into lifting her skirt. Lisa Fitzgerald immediately called the school principal, Frederick Scully, who arranged a meeting later that day with the Fitzgeralds, their daughter, and another school official, Lynda Day. Scully and Day then questioned the alleged bully, who denied the allegations. Day also interviewed the bus driver and several students who rode the bus. She concluded that she could not corroborate the girl’s version of the events.
The Fitzgeralds’ daughter then provided new details of the alleged abuse to her parents, who relayed them to Scully. Specifically, she told her parents that in addition to bullying her into raising her skirt, the boy coerced her into pulling down her underpants and spreading her legs. Scully scheduled a second meeting with the Fitzgeralds to discuss the additional details and again questioned the boy and other students.
Meanwhile, the local police department conducted an independent investigation and concluded there was insufficient evidence to bring criminal charges against the boy. Based partly on the police investigation and partly on the school’s own investigation, Scully similarly concluded there was insufficient evidence to warrant discipline. Scully did propose remedial measures to the Fitzgeralds. He suggested transferring their daughter to a different bus or leaving rows of empty seats between the kindergarteners and older students on the original bus. The Fitzgeralds felt that these proposals punished their daughter instead of the boy and countered with alternative proposals. They suggested transferring the boy to a different bus or placing a monitor on the original bus. The Barnstable school system’s superintendent, Russell Dever, did not act on these proposals.
The Fitzgeralds began driving their daughter to school to avoid further bullying on the bus, but she continued to report unsettling incidents at school. The Fitzgeralds reported each incident to Scully. The Fitzgeralds’ daughter had an unusual number of absences during the remainder of the school year.
In April 2002, the Fitzgeralds filed suit in District Court, alleging that the school system’s response to their allegations of ***ual harassment had been inadequate, resulting in further harassment to their daughter. Their complaint included: (1) a claim for violation of Title IX against the Barnstable School Committee (the school system’s governing body), (2) claims under 42 U. S. C. §1983 for violations of Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment against the school committee and Dever, and (3) Massachusetts state-law claims against the school committee and Dever. The school committee and Dever (respondents here), filed a motion to dismiss, which the District Court granted as to the §1983 claims and the state-law claims. On the Title IX claim, the school committee filed a motion for summary judgment, which the District Court also granted. Hunter v. Barnstable School Committee, 456 F. Supp. 2d 255, 266 (Mass. 2006).
The Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed. 504 F. 3d 165. Turning first to the Title IX claim against the school committee, the court noted three points that were not in dispute: (1) the school committee was the recipient of federal funds and was therefore subject to Title IX, (2) the school committee had actual knowledge of the harassment the Fitzgeralds’ daughter suffered, and (3) if the allegations of the complaint were true, the harassment was “severe, pervasive and objectively offensive.” Id., at 172. The court concluded that the Fitzgeralds’ Title IX claim lacked merit, however, because the response of the school committee and Dever to the reported harassment had been objectively reasonable. Id.,at 175.
The Court of Appeals turned next to the Fitzgeralds’ §1983 claims. Relying on this Court’s precedents in Middle*** County Sewerage Authority v. National Sea Clammers Assn., 453 U. S. 1 (1981) , Smith v. Robinson, 468 U. S. 992 (1984) , and Rancho Palos Verdes v. Abrams, 544 U. S. 113 (2005) , the court characterized Title IX’s implied private remedy as “sufficiently comprehensive” to preclude use of §1983 to advance statutory claims based on Title IX itself. 504 F. 3d, at 179. This reasoning, the court held, “appl[ied] with equal force” to the constitutional claims. Ibid. The court concluded that “Congress saw Title IX as the sole means of vindicating the constitutional right to be free from gender discrimination perpetrated by educational institutions.” Ibid. The Court of Appeals’ decision deepened a conflict among the Circuits regarding whether Title IX precludes use of §1983 to redress unconstitutional gender discrimination in schools. Compare Bruneau ex rel. Schofield v. South Kortright Central School Dist., 163 F. 3d 749, 758–759 (CA2 1998); Waid v. Merrill Area Public Schools 91 F. 3d 857, 862–863 (CA7 1996); Pfeiffer v. Marion Center Area School Dist., 917 F. 2d 779, 789 (CA3 1990), with Communities for Equity v. Michigan High School Athletic Assn., 459 F. 3d 676, 691 (CA6 2006); Crawford v. Davis, 109 F. 3d 1281, 1284 (CA8 1997); Seamons v. Snow, 84 F. 3d 1226, 1234 (CA10 1996). We granted certiorari to resolve this conflict, 553 U. S. ___ (2008), and we now reverse.
[/align]