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

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

17 

Opinion of the Court 

they recognize are presumptively enforceable under §1983. 

C 
Even  if  a  statutory  provision  unambiguously  secures 
rights,  a  defendant  “may  defeat  t[he]  presumption  by 
demonstrating that Congress did not intend” that §1983 be
available to enforce those rights.  Rancho Palos Verdes, 544 
U. S., at 120.13  For evidence of such intent, we have looked 
to “the statute creating the right.”  Ibid.  A statute could, of 
course, expressly forbid §1983’s use.  Fitzgerald, 555 U. S., 
at 252; Rancho Palos Verdes, 544 U. S., at 120.  Absent such 
a  sign,  a  defendant  must  show  that  Congress  issued  the
same  command  implicitly,  by  creating  “a  ‘comprehensive
enforcement  scheme  that  is  incompatible  with  individual
enforcement  under  §1983.’ ”    Id.,  at  120.  Only  the  latter
path is at issue here. 

1 
Our precedent outlines what HHC must show to traverse
the implicit-preclusion path.  “ ‘The crucial consideration’ ” 
is whether “Congress intended a statute’s remedial scheme
to  ‘be  the  exclusive  avenue  through  which  a  plaintiff  may 
assert [his] claims.’ ”  Fitzgerald, 555 U. S., at 252 (quoting 
Smith  v.  Robinson,  468  U. S.  992,  1009,  1012  (1984)  (em-
phasis added)); Fitzgerald, 555 U. S., at 252 (framing “ ‘[t]he 

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13 The “ ‘rebuttable presumption’ ” that our cases describe, Rancho Pa-
los  Verdes,  544  U. S.,  at  120,  is  not  an  artificially  onerous  court-made 
hurdle.  It merely reflects what §1983’s plain text commands: The §1983
remedy is available to vindicate federal individual rights “secured by . . . 
la[w].”  In  other  words,  the  presumption  recognizes  that,  even  where 
Congress  has  unambiguously  secured  certain  federal  individual  rights 
by law, it may have simultaneously given good reason (detectable with 
ordinary  interpretive  tools)  to  conclude  that  the  §1983  remedy  is  not 
available for those rights, even though it “generally” is.  Gonzaga, 536 
U. S., at 284, and n. 4.  And it also recognizes that it is the defendant’s 
burden to show that a right otherwise secured by law is not §1983 en-
forceable.  Rancho Palos Verdes, 544 U. S., at 120; Gonzaga, 536 U. S., 
at 284, and n. 4.