Page:Health and Hospital Corp. of Marion Co. v. Talevski.pdf/6

2 §1983’s unqualified reference to “laws” “means what it says,” Maine v. Thiboutot, 448 U. S. 1, 4 (1980), and to rule instead that §1983 contains an implicit carveout for laws that Congress enacts via its spending power—a holding that, according to petitioners, would mean that §1983 could not be used to enforce any rights the FNHRA purports to recognize. In the alternative, petitioners point to our established methods for determining whether a statutory provision creates a §1983-enforceable right and maintain that these FNHRA provisions do not create rights that nursing-home residents can enforce via §1983.

We reject both propositions. “Laws” means “laws,” no less today than in the 1870s, and nothing in petitioners’ appeal to Reconstruction-era contract law shows otherwise. Consequently, as we have previously held, §1983 can presumptively be used to enforce unambiguously conferred federal individual rights, unless a private right of action under §1983 would thwart any enforcement mechanism that the rights-creating statute contains for protection of the rights it has created. Fitzgerald v. Barnstable School Comm., 555 U. S. 246, 253–255 (2009); Gonzaga Univ. v. Doe, 536 U. S. 273, 284, and n. 4 (2002). We hold that the two FNHRA provisions at issue here do unambiguously create §1983-enforceable rights. And we discern no incompatibility between private enforcement under §1983 and the statutory scheme that Congress has devised for the protection of those rights. Accordingly, we affirm the lower court’s judgment that respondent’s §1983 action can proceed in court.

In 2016, when Gorgi Talevski’s dementia progressed to the point that his family members could no longer care for him, they placed him in petitioner Valparaiso Care and Rehabilitation’s (VCR) nursing home. When he entered VCR,