Syllabus
The Court is unpersuaded by HHC’s argument that, because Congress seems to have enacted the FNHRA pursuant to the Spending Clause, Talevski cannot invoke §1983 to vindicate rights recognized by the FNHRA. HHC starts with the Court’s observation that federal legislation premised on the Spending Clause power is “much in the nature of a contract,” Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman, 451 U. S. 1, 17. From there, HHC argues that Spending Clause statutes may not be enforced via §1983 because contracts were not generally enforceable by third-party beneficiaries at when §1983 was enacted in the 1870s. The Court rejects HHC’s argument. First, while the Court has reasoned that Congress’s failure to displace firmly rooted common-law principles generally indicates that it incorporated those established principles into §1983, Wyatt v. Cole, 504 U. S. 158, 163–164, HHC’s key common-law plank here—that third-party beneficiaries could not sue to enforce contractual obligations during the relevant time—is, at a minimum, contestable. “[S]omething more than ‘ambiguous historical evidence’ is required [to] ‘flatly overrule a number of major decisions of this Court,’ ” Gamble v. United States, 587 U. S. ___, ___. Second, because “[t]here is no doubt that the cause of action created by §1983 is, and was always regarded as, a tort claim,” Monterey v. Del Monte Dunes at Monterey, Ltd., 526 U. S. 687, 727 (Scalia, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment), HHC’s focus on 1870s law governing third-party-beneficiary suits in contract is perplexing, and HHC offers no reason those principles should be read to displace the plain scope of “laws” in §1983. Pp. 5–10.
(b) Under the Court’s precedent, the FNHRA provisions at issue here unambiguously confer individual federal rights enforceable under §1983, and the Court discerns no intent by Congress in FNHRA to preclude private enforcement of these rights under §1983. Pp. 11–23.
