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6 

HEALTH AND HOSPITAL CORPORATION OF MARION 
CTY. v. TALEVSKI 
Opinion of the Court 

B 
1 
HHC attempts to sow renewed doubt about §1983’s tex-
tually unqualified sweep by proffering “historical evidence.”
Brief for Petitioners 3; see also id., at 2 (asserting that “[f]or 
most of this nation’s history, individuals did not have a rec-
ognized  private  right  to  enforce  obligations  prescribed  by
federal statutes”).  As background for our evaluation of the 
particulars of HHC’s Spending Clause-based argument re-
garding  §1983’s  meaning,  see  Part  II–B–2,  infra,  a  fuller 
picture  of  the  relevant  historical  context  is  warranted. 
United States v. Union Pacific R. Co., 91 U. S. 72, 79 (1875); 
accord, Towne v. Eisner, 245 U. S. 418, 425 (1918) (Holmes, 
J., for the Court).

Before the Civil War, few direct federal protections for in-
dividual  rights  against  state  infringements  existed.  The 
Thirteenth,  Fourteenth,  and  Fifteenth  Amendments 
worked a sea change in this regard.  See McDonald v. Chi-
cago,  561  U. S.  742,  754  (2010);  Fitzpatrick  v.  Bitzer,  427 
U. S. 445, 453–456 (1976); Ex parte Virginia, 100 U. S. 339, 
344–345 (1880).  Still, neither these Civil War Amendments 
nor the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1866 successfully pre-
vented postbellum state actors from continuing to deprive
American citizens of federally protected rights.  Mitchum v. 
Foster, 407 U. S. 225, 240 (1972).

In early 1871, a Senate Select Committee produced and 
distributed  a  Report  that  ran  hundreds  of  pages  and  re-
counted  pervasive  state-sanctioned  lawlessness  and  vio-
lence against the freedmen and their White Republican al-
lies.  Monroe  v.  Pape,  365  U. S.  167,  174  (1961)  (citing  S.
Rep. No. 1, 42d Cong., 1st. Sess. (1871)).4  After reading the 
—————— 

4 Encapsulating the Report, victim testimony, and press accounts for 
his colleagues, one Congressman (as Monroe noted) lamented that “ ‘mur-
der is stalking abroad in disguise, . . . whippings and lynchings and ban-
ishment have been visited upon unoffending American citizens, [and] the 
local administrations have been found inadequate or unwilling to apply