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2 

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

§1983’s  unqualified  reference  to  “laws”  “means  what  it 
says,” Maine v. Thiboutot, 448 U. S. 1, 4 (1980), and to rule 
instead  that  §1983  contains  an  implicit  carveout  for  laws
that  Congress  enacts  via  its  spending  power—a  holding 
that, according to petitioners, would mean that §1983 could 
not be used to enforce any rights the FNHRA purports to 
recognize.  In the alternative, petitioners point to our estab-
lished methods for determining whether a statutory provi-
sion  creates  a  §1983-enforceable  right  and  maintain  that 
these FNHRA provisions do not create rights that nursing-
home residents can enforce via §1983.

We reject both propositions.  “Laws” means “laws,” no less 
today than in the 1870s, and nothing in petitioners’ appeal 
to Reconstruction-era contract law shows otherwise.  Con-
sequently, as we have previously held, §1983 can presump-
tively be used to enforce unambiguously conferred federal
individual  rights,  unless  a  private  right  of  action  under 
§1983 would thwart any enforcement mechanism that the
rights-creating statute contains for protection of the rights 
it has created.  Fitzgerald v. Barnstable School Comm., 555 
U. S. 246, 253–255 (2009); Gonzaga Univ. v. Doe, 536 U. S. 
273,  284,  and  n. 4  (2002).    We  hold  that  the  two  FNHRA 
provisions at issue here do unambiguously create §1983-en-
forceable  rights.  And  we  discern  no  incompatibility  be-
tween private enforcement under §1983 and the statutory 
scheme  that  Congress  has  devised  for  the  protection  of
those rights.  Accordingly, we affirm the lower court’s judg-
ment that respondent’s §1983 action can proceed in court. 

I 

In  2016,  when  Gorgi  Talevski’s  dementia  progressed  to 
the point that his family members could no longer care for 
him, they placed him in petitioner Valparaiso Care and Re-
habilitation’s (VCR) nursing home.1  When he entered VCR, 
—————— 

1 We rely for these facts on the operative complaint’s well-pleaded al- 

legations.  See Walden v. Fiore, 571 U. S. 277, 281, n. 2 (2014).