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286 GEBSER v. LAGO VISTA INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DIST.

Opinion of the Court

U. S. C. § 2000a–3(a) (1970 ed.); §§ 2000e–5(e), (g) (1970 ed.,
It was not until 1991 that Congress made dam-
Supp. II).
ages available under Title VII, and even then, Congress care-
fully limited the amount recoverable in any individual case,
calibrating the maximum recovery to the size of the em-
ployer. See 42 U. S. C. § 1981a(b)(3). Adopting petitioners’
position would amount, then, to allowing unlimited recovery
of damages under Title IX where Congress has not spoken
on the subject of either the right or the remedy, and in the
face of evidence that when Congress expressly considered
both in Title VII it restricted the amount of damages
available.

Congress enacted Title IX in 1972 with two principal ob-
jectives in mind: “[T]o avoid the use of federal resources to
support discriminatory practices” and “to provide individual
citizens effective protection against those practices.” Can-
non, supra, at 704. The statute was modeled after Title VI
of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, see 441 U. S., at 694–696;
Grove City College v. Bell, 465 U. S. 555, 566 (1984), which
is parallel to Title IX except that it prohibits race discrimi-
nation, not sex discrimination, and applies in all programs
receiving federal funds, not only in education programs.
See 42 U. S. C. § 2000d et seq. The two statutes operate in
the same manner, conditioning an offer of federal funding on
in what
a promise by the recipient not to discriminate,
amounts essentially to a contract between the Government
and the recipient of funds. See Guardians, 463 U. S., at 599
(opinion of White, J.); id., at 609 (Powell, J., concurring in
judgment); cf. Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Hal-
derman, 451 U. S. 1, 17 (1981).

That contractual framework distinguishes Title IX from
Title VII, which is framed in terms not of a condition but of
an outright prohibition. Title VII applies to all employers
without regard to federal funding and aims broadly to “eradi-
cat[e] discrimination throughout the economy.” Landgraf
v. USI Film Products, 511 U. S. 244, 254 (1994) (internal quo-