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290 GEBSER v. LAGO VISTA INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DIST.

Opinion of the Court

comparable express causes of action’ ”), quoting Blue Chip
Stamps v. Manor Drug Stores, 421 U. S. 723, 736 (1975).
Moreover, an award of damages in a particular case might
well exceed a recipient’s level of federal funding. See Tr. of
Oral Arg. 35 (Lago Vista’s federal funding for 1992–1993 was
roughly $120,000). Where a statute’s express enforcement
scheme hinges its most severe sanction on notice and un-
successful efforts to obtain compliance, we cannot attribute
to Congress the intention to have implied an enforcement
scheme that allows imposition of greater liability without
comparable conditions.

IV

Because the express remedial scheme under Title IX is
predicated upon notice to an “appropriate person” and an
opportunity to rectify any violation, 20 U. S. C. § 1682, we
conclude, in the absence of further direction from Congress,
that the implied damages remedy should be fashioned along
the same lines. An “appropriate person” under § 1682 is, at
a minimum, an ofﬁcial of the recipient entity with authority
to take corrective action to end the discrimination. Conse-
quently, in cases like this one that do not involve ofﬁcial pol-
icy of the recipient entity, we hold that a damages remedy
will not lie under Title IX unless an ofﬁcial who at a mini-
mum has authority to address the alleged discrimination and
to institute corrective measures on the recipient’s behalf has
actual knowledge of discrimination in the recipient’s pro-
grams and fails adequately to respond.

We think, moreover, that the response must amount to de-
liberate indifference to discrimination. The administrative
enforcement scheme presupposes that an ofﬁcial who is ad-
vised of a Title IX violation refuses to take action to bring
the recipient into compliance. The premise, in other words,
is an ofﬁcial decision by the recipient not to remedy the viola-
tion. That framework ﬁnds a rough parallel in the standard
of deliberate indifference. Under a lower standard, there
would be a risk that the recipient would be liable in dam-