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II
A
In relevant part, 42 U. S. C. §1983, provides:
“Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress.”
In three cases, this Court has found that statutory enactments precluded claims under this statute. Sea Clammers, supra; Smith, supra; Rancho Palos Verdes, supra. These cases establish that “[t]he crucial consideration is what Congress intended.” Smith, 468 U. S., at 1012. If Congress intended a statute’s remedial scheme to “be the exclusive avenue through which a plaintiff may assert [the] claim,” id.,at 1009, the §1983 claims are precluded. See Rancho Palos Verdes, 544 U. S., at 120–121 (“The critical question, then, is whether Congress meant the judicial remedy authorized by [the statute] to coexist with an alternative remedy available in a §1983 action”).
In those cases in which the §1983 claim is based on a statutory right, “evidence of such congressional intent may be found directly in the statute creating the right, or inferred from the statute’s creation of a comprehensive enforcement scheme that is incompatible with individual enforcement under §1983.” Id., at 120 (internal quotation marks omitted). In cases in which the §1983 claim alleges a constitutional violation, lack of congressional intent may be inferred from a comparison of the rights and protections of the statute and those existing under the Constitution. Where the contours of such rights and protections diverge in significant ways, it is not likely that Congress intended to displace §1983 suits enforcing constitutional rights. Our conclusions regarding congressional intent can be confirmed by a statute’s context. Id., at 127 (Breyer, J., concurring) (“[C]ontext, not just literal text, will often lead a court to Congress’ intent in respect to a particular statute”).
In determining whether a subsequent statute precludes the enforcement of a federal right under §1983, we have placed primary emphasis on the nature and extent of that statute’s remedial scheme. See Sea Clammers, supra, at 20 (“When the remedial devices provided in a particular Act are sufficiently comprehensive, they may suffice to demonstrate congressional intent to preclude the remedy of suits under §1983”).
Sea Clammers illustrates this approach. The plaintiffs brought suit under §1983 for violations of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act and the Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act of 1972. This Court’s analysis focused on these two statutes’ “unusually elaborate enforcement provisions,” which authorized the Environmental Protection Agency to seek civil and criminal penalties for violations, permitted “ ‘any interested person’ ” to seek judicial review, and contained detailed citizen suit provisions allowing for injunctive relief. 453 U. S., at 13–14. Allowing parallel §1983 claims to proceed, we concluded, would have thwarted Congress’ intent in formulating and detailing these provisions.
In Smith, the plaintiffs alleged deprivation of a free, appropriate public education for their handicapped child, in violation of the Education of the Handicapped Act (EHA) and the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment . Departing from the pattern of the plaintiffs in Sea Clammers, the Smith plaintiffs relied on §1983 to assert independent constitutional rights, not to assert the statutory rights guaranteed by the EHA. As in Sea Clammers,however, this Court focused on the statute’s detailed remedial scheme in concluding that Congress intended the statute to provide the sole avenue for relief. Smith, 468 U. S., at 1011 (noting “the comprehensive nature of the procedures and guarantees set out in the [the statute] and Congress’ express efforts to place on local and state educational agencies the primary responsibility for developing a plan to accommodate the needs of each individual handicapped child”).
In Rancho Palos Verdes, we again focused on a statute’s remedial scheme in inferring congressional intent for exclusivity. After being denied a permit to build a radio tower on his property, the plaintiff brought claims for injunctive relief under the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (TCA) and for damages and attorney’s fees under §1983. Noting that the TCA provides highly detailed and restrictive administrative and judicial remedies, and explaining that “limitations upon the remedy contained in the statute are deliberate and are not to be evaded through §1983,” we again concluded that Congress must have intended the statutory remedies to be exclusive. 544 U. S., at 124.
In all three cases, the statutes at issue required plaintiffs to comply with particular procedures and/or to exhaust particular administrative remedies prior to filing suit. Sea Clammers, supra, at 6; Smith, supra, at 1011–1012; Rancho Palos Verdes, supra, at 122. Offering plaintiffs a direct route to court via §1983 would have circumvented these procedures and given plaintiffs access to tangible benefits—such as damages, attorney’s fees, and costs—that were unavailable under the statutes.1 “Allowing a plaintiff to circumvent” the statutes’ provisions in this way would have been “inconsistent with Congress’ carefully tailored scheme.” Smith, supra, at 1012.
B
1
Section 901(a) of Title IX provides:
“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of ***, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” 20 U. S. C. §1681(a).
The statute’s only express enforcement mechanism, §1682, is an administrative procedure resulting in the withdrawal of federal funding from institutions that are not in compliance. In addition, this Court has recognized an implied private right of action. Cannon v. University of Chicago, 441 U. S. 677, 717 (1979) . In a suit brought pursuant to this private right, both injunctive relief and damages are available. Franklin v. Gwinnett County Public Schools, 503 U. S. 60, 76 (1992) .
These remedies—withdrawal of federal funds and an implied cause of action—stand in stark contrast to the “unusually elaborate,” “carefully tailored,” and “restrictive” enforcement schemes of the statutes at issue in Sea Clammers, Smith, and Rancho Palos Verdes. Unlike those statutes, Title IX has no administrative exhaustion requirement and no notice provisions. Under its implied private right of action, plaintiffs can file directly in court, Cannon, supra, at 717, and can obtain the full range of remedies, see Franklin, supra, at 72 (concluding that “Congress did not intend to limit the remedies available in a suit brought under Title IX”). As a result, parallel and concurrent §1983 claims will neither circumvent required procedures, nor allow access to new remedies. Moreover, this Court explained in Rancho Palos Verdes that “[t]he provision of an express, private means of redress in the statute itself” is a key consideration in determining congressional intent, and that “the existence of a more restrictive private remedy for statutory violations has been the dividing line between those cases in which we have held that an action would lie under §1983 and those in which we have held that it would not.” 544 U. S., at 121 (emphasis added). As noted, Title IX contains no express private remedy, much less a more restrictive one. This Court has never held that an implied right of action had the effect of precluding suit under §1983, likely because of the difficulty of discerning congressional intent in such a situation. See Franklin, supra, at 76 (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment) (“Quite obviously, the search for what was Congress’ remedial intent as to a right whose very existence Congress did not expressly acknowledge is unlikely to succeed”). Mindful that we should “not lightly conclude that Congress intended to preclude reliance on §1983 as a remedy for a substantial equal protection claim,” Smith, 468 U. S., at 1012, we see no basis for doing so here.
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