Page:Health and Hospital Corp. of Marion Co. v. Talevski.pdf/4

4, by creating “a ‘ [sic]comprehensive enforcement scheme that is incompatible with individual enforcement under §1983,” ibid. Here, the Court finds evidence of neither. The FNHRA establishes a detailed administrative scheme for inspections of nursing facilities, see §1396r(g), and authorizes governments to sanction and correct noncompliant facilities, see §1396r(h). But the statute lacks any indicia of congressional intent to preclude §1983 enforcement, such as an express private judicial right of action or any other provision that might signify that intent. HHC focuses on comprehensiveness of FNHRA’s enforcement mechanisms, but implicit preclusion is shown only by a “ ‘comprehensive enforcement scheme that is incompatible with individual enforcement under §1983.’ ” Fitzgerald v. Barnstable School Comm., 555 U. S. 246, 252 (emphasis added). The Court’s prior cases finding implicit preclusion involved statutes where private enforcement under §1983 would have thwarted Congress’s scheme by circumventing the statutes’ presuit procedures, or by giving plaintiffs access to tangible benefits otherwise unavailable under the statutes construed. HHC has identified no equivalent sign of incompatibility in the FNHRA, which lacks a private judicial right of action, a private federal administrative remedy, or any “carefu[l]” congressional “tailor[ing],” Fitzgerald, 555 U. S., at 255, that §1983 actions would “distort,” Rancho Palos Verdes, 544 U. S., at 127. Finally, the Court rejects any speculation that because Congress knew most nursing homes are private entities not subject to suit under §1983, the FNHRA’s remedial scheme “necessarily reflects Congress’s judgment that these administrative enforcement mechanisms appropriately protect the rights the statute confers,” Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 31. The focus in the implicit-preclusion inquiry remains whether something in the FNHRA has foreclosed §1983’s “genera[l]” availability as “a remedy for the vindication of rights secured by federal statutes.” Gonzaga, 536 U. S., at 284. The Court sees no such sign, much less a license for the Court to construct and impute to Congress an intent that the FNHRA does not embody. Pp. 17–23.

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