Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-806_2dp3.pdf
Page Number: 11

Cite as:  599 U. S. ____ (2023) 

7 

Opinion of the Court 

Report,  President  Ulysses  S.  Grant  implored  Congress  to 
act. 

It is against this backdrop that the 42d Congress enacted,
and President Grant signed, the Civil Rights Act of 1871. 
The first section of that statute, as reenacted in 1874, cre-
ated  the  federal  cause  of  action  now  codified  as  §1983. 
Chapman  v.  Houston  Welfare  Rights  Organization,  441 
U. S.  600,  608,  and  n.  16  (1979)  (citing  Rev.  Stat.  §1979 
(1874)).  The  “plain  language[’s]”  lack  of  “modifiers,”  Thi-
boutot, 448 U. S., at 4, reflected the regrettable reality that 
“state instrumentalities” could not, or would not, fully pro-
tect federal rights, Mitchum, 407 U. S., at 242. 

We have adhered to this understanding of §1983’s opera-
tion.  To  guarantee  the  protection  of  federal  rights,  “the
§1983  remedy  . . .  is,  in  all  events,  supplementary  to  any 
remedy any State might have.”  Owens v. Okure, 488 U. S. 
235, 248 (1989) (internal quotation marks omitted); Knick 
v. Township of Scott, 588 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (slip op., at 
11).  And  we  have  consistently  refused  to  read  §1983’s 
“plain language” to mean anything other than what it says. 
Thiboutot, 448 U. S., at 4–6 (observing that our cases, run-
ning back to at least 1968, only make sense if “laws” indeed 
means “laws”). 

2 
We  are  not  persuaded  by  HHC’s  argument  (which
JUSTICE  THOMAS  supports,  see  post,  at  1,  35  (dissenting 

—————— 
the  proper  corrective.’ ”    365  U. S.,  at  175  (quoting  Cong.  Globe,  42d
Cong., 1st Sess., App. 374 (1871)).  Another, summing up the same facts, 
stated: 

“ ‘Sheriffs, having eyes to see, see not; judges, having ears to hear, hear
not; witnesses conceal the truth or falsify it; grand and petit juries act as 
if they might be accomplices. . . . [A]ll the apparatus  and machinery of
civil  government,  all  the  processes  of  justice,  skulk  away  as  if  govern-
ment and justice were crimes and feared detection.  Among the most dan-
gerous things an injured party can do is to appeal to justice.’ ”  Mitchum, 
407 U. S., at 241 (quoting Cong. Globe, 42d Cong., 1st Sess., App. 78).