Page:Health and Hospital Corp. of Marion Co. v. Talevski.pdf/22

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HEALTH AND HOSPITAL CORPORATION OF MARION CTY. v. TALEVSKI

Opinion of the Court

critical question’ ” as “ ‘whether Congress meant [the statute’s remedial scheme] to coexist with … a §1983 action’ ” (quoting Rancho Palos Verdes, 544 U. S., at 120–121)).

Our precedents make clear that the sine qua non of a finding that Congress implicitly intended to preclude a private right of action under §1983 is incompatibility between enforcement under §1983 and the enforcement scheme that Congress has enacted. 555 U. S., at 252–254. We have used many terms and concepts to describe the necessary discordance between §1983 and a rights-conferring statute’s remedial scheme: “ ‘incompatible,’ ” “ ‘inconsistent,’ ” and “thwar[t]” are examples. Id., at 252–255. In all events, the question is whether the design of the enforcement scheme in the rights-conferring statute is inconsistent with enforcement under §1983, such that a court must infer that “Congress did not intend” to make available the “[§1983] remedy for [these] newly created right[s].” Rancho Palos Verdes, 544 U. S., at 120; see also Fitzgerald, 555 U. S., at 252.

Put another way, the inquiry boils down to what Congress intended, as divined from text and context. The application of the traditional tools of statutory construction to a statute’s remedial scheme may reveal no incompatibility between the enforcement scheme that Congress crafted in the rights-conferring statute and enforcement under §1983, or it may uncover sufficient incompatibility to make manifest Congress’s intent to preclude §1983 actions. See, e.g., id., at 253 (explaining a past implicit-preclusion case on the ground that permitting §1983 claims there would have “thwarted Congress’ intent”); Rancho Palos Verdes, 544 U. S., at 127 (§1983’s operation would have “distort[ed]” the pertinent other statute’s remedial scheme).

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We discern no incompatibility between the FNHRA’s remedial scheme and §1983 enforcement of the rights that the unnecessary-restraint and predischarge-notice provisions