Court Opinion

ID: 9427572
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:21:13.431084+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:08.104358
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Rehnquist,
with whom Mr. Justice Stewart joins, concurring.
Having joined the Court’s opinion in this case, my only purpose in writing separately is to make explicit what seems to me already implicit in that opinion. I think the approach of the Court, reflected in its analysis of the problem in this case and cases such as Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez, 436 U. S. 49 (1978), Cort v. Ash, 422 U. S. 66 (1975), and National Railroad Passenger Corp. v. National Assn. of Railroad Passengers, 414 U. S. 453 (1974), is quite different from the analysis in earlier cases such as J. I. Case Co. v. Borak, 377 U. S. 426 (1964). The question of the existence of a private right of action is basically one of statutory construction. See ante, at 688. And while state courts of general jurisdiction still enforcing the common law as well as statu*718tory law may be less constrained than are federal courts enforcing laws enacted by Congress, the latter must surely look to those laws to determine whether there was an intent to create a private right of action under them.
We do not write on an entirely clean slate, however, and the Court’s opinion demonstrates that Congress, at> least during the period of the enactment of the several Titles of the Civil Rights Act, tended to rely to a large extent on the courts to decide whether there should be a private right of action, rather than determining this question for itself. Cases such as J. I. Case Co. v. Borak, supra, and numerous cases from other federal courts, gave Congress good reason to think that the federal judiciary would undertake this task.
I fully agree with the Court’s statement that “[w]hen Congress intends private litigants to have a cause of action to support their statutory rights, the far better course is for it to specify as much when it creates those rights.” Ante, at 717. It seems to me that the factors to which I have here briefly adverted apprise the lawmaking branch of the Federal Government that the ball, so to speak, may well now be in its court. Not only is it “far better” for Congress to so specify when it intends private litigants to have a cause of action, but for this very reason this Court in the future should be extremely reluctant to imply a cause of action absent such specificity on the part of the Legislative Branch.