Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 340

524US2

Unit: $U87

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Cite as: 524 U. S. 274 (1998)

295

Stevens, J., dissenting

a high school student who had been sexually harassed by
a sports coach/teacher to recover damages from the school
district. That conclusion was supported by two considera-
tions.
In his opinion for the Court, Justice White ﬁrst relied
on the presumption that Congress intends to authorize “all
appropriate remedies” unless it expressly indicates other-
Id., at 66.3 He then noted that two amendments 4
wise.
to Title IX enacted after the decision in Cannon had vali-
dated Cannon’s holding and supported the conclusion that
“Congress did not intend to limit the remedies available in
503 U. S., at 72. Justice
a suit brought under Title IX.”
Scalia, concurring in the judgment, agreed that Congress’
amendment of Title IX to eliminate the States’ Eleventh
Amendment immunity, see 42 U. S. C. § 2000d–7(a)(1), must
be read “not only ‘as a validation of Cannon’s holding,’ ante,
at 72, but also as an implicit acknowledgment that damages
are available.”

503 U. S., at 78.

3 “In Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 163 (1803), for example, Chief
Justice Marshall observed that our Government ‘has been emphatically
termed a government of laws, and not of men.
It will certainly cease to
deserve this high appellation, if the laws furnish no remedy for the viola-
tion of a vested legal right.’ This principle originated in the English com-
mon law, and Blackstone described it as ‘a general and indisputable rule,
that where there is a legal right, there is also a legal remedy, by suit or
action at law, whenever that right is invaded.’
3 W. Blackstone, Commen-
taries 23 (1783). See also Ashby v. White, 1 Salk. 19, 21, 87 Eng. Rep.
808, 816 (Q. B. 1702) (‘If a statute gives a right, the common law will give
a remedy to maintain that right . . .’).” Franklin v. Gwinnett County
Public Schools, 503 U. S., at 66–67; see also id., at 67 (“ ‘A disregard of the
command of the statute is a wrongful act, and where it results in damage
to one of the class for whose especial beneﬁt the statute was enacted, the
right to recover the damages from the party in default is implied, accord-
ing to a doctrine of the common law’ ”) (quoting Texas & Paciﬁc R. Co. v.
Rigsby, 241 U. S. 33, 39 (1916)).

4 See Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1986, 42 U. S. C. § 2000d–7
(abrogating the States’ Eleventh Amendment immunity); Civil Rights
Restoration Act of 1987, 20 U. S. C. § 1687 (deﬁning “program or activity”
broadly).