Opinion of the Court
B
1
HHC attempts to sow renewed doubt about §1983’s textually 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 recognized private right to enforce obligations prescribed by federal statutes”). As background for our evaluation of the particulars of HHC’s Spending Clause-based argument regarding §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 individual rights against state infringements existed. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments worked a sea change in this regard. See McDonald v. Chicago, 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 prevented 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 recounted pervasive state-sanctioned lawlessness and violence against the freedmen and their White Republican allies. Monroe v. Pape, 365 U. S. 167, 174 (1961) (citing S. Rep. No. 1, 42d Cong., 1st. Sess. (1871)).[1] After reading the
- ↑ Encapsulating the Report, victim testimony, and press accounts for his colleagues, one Congressman (as Monroe noted) lamented that “ ‘murder is stalking abroad in disguise, … whippings and lynchings and banishment have been visited upon unoffending American citizens, [and] the local administrations have been found inadequate or unwilling to apply
