Opinion of the Court
Report, President Ulysses S. Grant implored Congress to act.
It is against this backdrop that the 42d Congress enacted, and President Grant signed, the Civil Rights Act of 1871. The first section of that statute, as reenacted in 1874, created the federal cause of action now codified as §1983. Chapman v. Houston Welfare Rights Organization, 441 U. S. 600, 608, and n. 16 (1979) (citing Rev. Stat. §1979 (1874)). The “plain language[’s]” lack of “modifiers,” Thiboutot, 448 U. S., at 4, reflected the regrettable reality that “state instrumentalities” could not, or would not, fully protect federal rights, Mitchum, 407 U. S., at 242.
We have adhered to this understanding of §1983’s operation. To guarantee the protection of federal rights, “the §1983 remedy … is, in all events, supplementary to any remedy any State might have.” Owens v. Okure, 488 U. S. 235, 248 (1989) (internal quotation marks omitted); Knick v. Township of Scott, 588 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (slip op., at 11). And we have consistently refused to read §1983’s “plain language” to mean anything other than what it says. Thiboutot, 448 U. S., at 4–6 (observing that our cases, running back to at least 1968, only make sense if “laws” indeed means “laws”).
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We are not persuaded by HHC’s argument (which Justice Thomas supports, see post, at 1, 35 (dissenting
the proper corrective.’ ” 365 U. S., at 175 (quoting Cong. Globe, 42d Cong., 1st Sess., App. 374 (1871)). Another, summing up the same facts, stated:
“ ‘Sheriffs, having eyes to see, see not; judges, having ears to hear, hear not; witnesses conceal the truth or falsify it; grand and petit juries act as if they might be accomplices. … [A]ll the apparatus and machinery of civil government, all the processes of justice, skulk away as if government and justice were crimes and feared detection. Among the most dangerous things an injured party can do is to appeal to justice.’ ” Mitchum, 407 U. S., at 241 (quoting Cong. Globe, 42d Cong., 1st Sess., App. 78).
