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14 

VEGA v. TEKOH 

Opinion of the Court 

§1983 claim.  But whatever else may be said about this ar-
gument,6 it cannot succeed unless Tekoh can persuade us 
that this “law” should be expanded to include the right to
sue for damages under §1983.

As  we  have  noted,  “[a]  judicially  crafted”  prophylactic 
rule  should  apply  “only  where  its  benefits  outweigh  its
costs,” Shatzer, 559 U. S., at 106, and here, while the bene-
fits  of  permitting  the  assertion  of  Miranda  claims  under 
§1983 would be slight, the costs would be substantial. 

Miranda  rests  on  a  pragmatic  judgment  about  what  is 
needed to stop the violation at trial of the Fifth Amendment 
right  against  compelled  self-incrimination.    That  prophy-
lactic purpose is served by the suppression at trial of state-

—————— 

6 “[Section] 1983 does not provide an avenue for relief every time a state
actor violates a federal law.”  Rancho Palos Verdes v. Abrams, 544 U. S. 
113, 119 (2005).  If a §1983 plaintiff demonstrates that the federal stat-
ute “creates an individually enforceable right in the class of beneficiaries
to which he belongs,” this gives rise to “ ‘a rebuttable presumption that 
the right is enforceable under §1983,’ ” and “[t]he defendant may defeat
this  presumption  by  demonstrating  that  Congress  did  not  intend  that
remedy for a newly created right.”  Id., at 120 (quoting Blessing v. Free-
stone, 520 U. S. 329, 341 (1997)).  In this case, the “law” that could confer 
the right in question is not a statute but judicially created prophylactic
rules.  It could be argued that a judicially created prophylactic rule can-
not be the basis for a §1983 suit, but we need not decide that question 
because,  assuming  that  such  rules  can  provide  the  basis  for  a  §1983
claim, we would be led back to a question that is very much like the one 
discussed supra, at 7–11, namely, whether the benefits of allowing such 
a claim outweigh the costs. 

The  dissent,  by  contrast,  would  apparently  hold  that  a  prophylactic 
rule crafted by the Judiciary to protect a constitutional right, unlike a
statute that confers a personal right, is always cognizable under §1983.
There is no sound reason to give this preferred status to such prophylac-
tic rules.  The dissent contends that the Miranda rules merit this special 
treatment because they are “secured by” the Constitution, see post, at 5– 
6, but in fact, as we have shown, those rules differ from the right secured 
by the Fifth Amendment  and are instead secured for prophylactic rea-
sons by decisions of this Court.