Page:Health and Hospital Corp. of Marion Co. v. Talevski.pdf/9

Rh 596 U. S. ___ (2022). For the reasons explained below, we affirm the Seventh Circuit’s judgment.

As relevant here, §1983 provides that "“[e]very person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress.”"

That is, any person within the jurisdiction of the United States may invoke this cause of action against any other person who, acting “under color of” state law, has deprived them of “any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws” of the United States.

We have been asked before to narrow the scope of this express authorization, i.e., to read “laws” to mean only “civil rights or equal protection laws.” Thiboutot, 448 U. S., at 6. We declined to do so, reasoning that a straightforward reading of the “plain language” of §1983 is required. Id., at 4. That should have been no surprise; “Congress attached no modifiers to the phrase [‘and laws’].” Ibid.

Since Thiboutot, we have crafted a test for determining whether a particular federal law actually secures rights for §1983 purposes. See Gonzaga, 536 U. S., at 283–285; Part III–B, infra. But we have not previously doubted that any federal law can do so.