Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 334

524US2

Unit: $U87

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Cite as: 524 U. S. 274 (1998)

289

Opinion of the Court

ing payment of monetary damages, and there is no indication
that payment of damages has been demanded as a condition
of ﬁnding a recipient to be in compliance with the statute.
See Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae in Franklin
v. Gwinnett County School District, O. T. 1991, No. 90–918,
In Franklin, for instance, the Department of Educa-
p. 24.
tion found a violation of Title IX but determined that the
school district came into compliance by virtue of the offend-
ing teacher’s resignation and the district’s institution of a
grievance procedure for sexual harassment complaints.
503
U. S., at 64, n. 3.

Presumably, a central purpose of requiring notice of the
violation “to the appropriate person” and an opportunity for
voluntary compliance before administrative enforcement
proceedings can commence is to avoid diverting education
funding from beneﬁcial uses where a recipient was unaware
of discrimination in its programs and is willing to institute
prompt corrective measures. The scope of private damages
relief proposed by petitioners is at odds with that basic
objective. When a teacher’s sexual harassment is imputed
to a school district or when a school district is deemed to
have “constructively” known of the teacher’s harassment,
by assumption the district had no actual knowledge of the
teacher’s conduct. Nor, of course, did the district have an
opportunity to take action to end the harassment or to limit
further harassment.

It would be unsound, we think, for a statute’s express sys-
tem of enforcement to require notice to the recipient and
an opportunity to come into voluntary compliance while a
judicially implied system of enforcement permits substantial
liability without regard to the recipient’s knowledge or its
corrective actions upon receiving notice. Cf. Central Bank
of Denver, N. A. v. First Interstate Bank of Denver, N. A.,
511 U. S., at 180 (“[I]t would be ‘anomalous to impute to Con-
gress an intention to expand the plaintiff class for a judicially
implied cause of action beyond the bounds it delineated for