Regents of University of California v. Bakke/Separate White

MR. JUSTICE WHITE.

I write separately concerning the question of whether Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000d et seq., provides for a private cause of action. Four Justices are apparently of the view that such a private cause of action [p380] exists, and four Justices assume it for purposes of this case. I am unwilling merely to assume an affirmative answer. If, in fact, no private cause of action exists, this Court and the lower courts as well are without jurisdiction to consider respondent's Title VI claim. As I see it, if we are not obliged to do so, it is at least advisable to address this threshold jurisdictional issue. See United States v. Griffin, 303 U.S. 226, 229 (1938). Furthermore, just as it is inappropriate to address constitutional issues without determining whether statutory grounds urged before us are dispositive, it is at least questionable practice to adjudicate a novel and difficult statutory issue without first considering whether we have jurisdiction to decide it. Consequently, I address the question of whether respondent may bring suit under Title VI.

A private cause of action under Title VI, in terms both of [p381] the Civil Rights Act as a whole and that Title, would not be "consistent with the underlying purposes of the legislative scheme," and would be contrary to the legislative intent. Cort v. Ash, 422 U.S. 66, 78 (1975). Title II, 42 U.S.C. § 2000a et seq., dealing with public accommodations, and Title VII, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq. (1970 ed. and Supp. V), dealing with employment, proscribe private discriminatory conduct that, as of 1964, neither the Constitution nor other federal statutes had been construed to forbid. Both Titles carefully provided for private actions as well as for official participation in enforcement. Title III, 42 U.S.C. § 2000b et seq., and Title IV, 42 U.S.C. § 2000c et seq. (1970 ed and Supp. V), dealing with public facilities and public education, respectively, authorize suits by the Attorney General to eliminate racial discrimination in these areas. Because suits to end discrimination in public facilities and public education were already available under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 it was, of course, unnecessary to provide for private actions under Titles III and IV. But each Title carefully provided that its provisions for public actions would not adversely affect preexisting private remedies. § § 2000b-2 and 2000c-8.

The role of Title VI was to terminate federal financial support for public and private institutions or programs that discriminated on the basis of race. Section 601, 42 U.S.C. § 2000d imposed the proscription that no person, on the grounds of race, color, or national origin, was to be excluded from or discriminated against under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance. But there is no express provision for private actions to enforce Title VI, and it would be quite incredible if Congress, after so carefully attending to the matter of private actions in other Titles of the Act, intended silently to create a private cause of action to enforce Title VI.

It is also evident from the face of § 602, 42 U.S.C. § 2000d-1, that Congress intended the departments and agencies [p382] to define and to refine, by rule or regulation, the general proscription of § 601, subject only to judicial review of agency action in accordance with established procedures. Section 602 provides for enforcement: every federal department or agency furnishing financial support is to implement the proscription by appropriate rule or regulation, each of which requires approval by the President. Termination of funding as a sanction for noncompliance is authorized, but only after a hearing and after the failure of voluntary means to secure compliance. Moreover, termination may not take place until the department or agency involved files with the appropriate committees of the House and Senate a full written report of the circumstances and the grounds for such action and 30 days have elapsed thereafter. Judicial review was provided, at least for actions terminating financial assistance.

Termination of funding was regarded by Congress as a serious enforcement step, and the legislative history is replete with assurances that it would not occur until every possibility for conciliation had been exhausted. To allow a private [p383] individual to sue to cut off funds under Title VI would compromise these assurances and short-circuit the procedural preconditions provided in Title VI. If the Federal Government may not cut off funds except pursuant to an agency rule, approved by the President, and presented to the appropriate committee of Congress for a layover period, and after voluntary means to achieve compliance have failed, it is inconceivable that Congress intended to permit individuals to circumvent these administrative prerequisites themselves.

Furthermore, although Congress intended Title VI to end federal financial support for racially discriminatory policies of not only public but also private institutions and programs, it is extremely unlikely that Congress, without a word indicating that it intended to do so, contemplated creating an independent, private statutory cause of action against all private, as well as public, agencies that might be in violation of the section. There is no doubt that Congress regarded private litigation as an important tool to attack discriminatory practices. It does not at all follow, however, that Congress anticipated new private actions under Title VI itself. Wherever a discriminatory program was a public undertaking, such as a public school, private remedies were already available under other statutes, and a private remedy under Title VI was [p384] unnecessary. Congress was well aware of this fact. Significantly, there was frequent reference to Simkins v. Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital, 323 F.2d 059 (CA4 1963), cert. denied, 376 U.S. 938 (1964), throughout the congressional deliberations. See, e.g., 110 Cong.Rec. 654 (1964) (Sen. Humphrey). Simkins held that, under appropriate circumstances, the operation of a private hospital with "massive use of public funds and extensive state-federal sharing in the common plan" constituted "state action" for the purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment. 323 F.2d at 967. It was unnecessary, of course, to create a Title VI private action against private discriminators where they were already within the reach of existing private remedies. But when they were not — and Simkins carefully disclaimed holding that "every subvention by the federal or state government automatically involves the beneficiary in ‘state action,'" ibid. — it is difficult [p385] to believe that Congress silently created a private remedy to terminate conduct that previously had been entirely beyond the reach of federal law.

For those who believe, contrary to my views, that Title VI was intended to create a stricter standard of colorblindness than the Constitution itself requires, the result of no private cause of action follows even more readily. In that case, Congress must be seen to have banned degrees of discrimination, as well as types of discriminators, not previously reached by law. A Congress careful enough to provide that existing private causes of action would be preserved (in Titles III and IV) would not leave for inference a vast new extension of private enforcement power. And a Congress so exceptionally concerned with the satisfaction of procedural preliminaries before confronting fund recipients with the choice of a cutoff or of stopping discriminating would not permit private parties to pose precisely that same dilemma in a greatly widened category of cases with no procedural requirements whatsoever.

Significantly, in at least three instances, legislators who played a major role in the passage of Title VI explicitly stated that a private right of action under Title VI does not exist. [p386] As an "indication of legislative intent, explicit or implicit, either to create such a remedy or to deny one," Cort v. Ash, 422 U.S. at 78, clearer statements cannot be imagined, and under Cort, "an explicit purpose to deny such cause of action [is] controlling." Id. at 82. Senator Keating, for example, proposed a private "right to sue" for the "person suffering from discrimination"; but the Department of Justice refused to include it, and the Senator acquiesced. These are not neutral, ambiguous statements. They indicate the absence of a legislative intent to create a private remedy. Nor do any of these statements make nice distinctions between a private cause of action to enjoin discrimination and one to cut off funds, as MR. JUSTICE STEVENS and the three Justices who join his opinion apparently would. See post at 419-420, n. 26. Indeed, it would be odd if they did, since the practical effect of either type of private cause of action would be identical. If private suits to enjoin conduct allegedly violative of § 601 were permitted, recipients of federal funds would be presented with the choice of either ending what the court, rather than the agency, determined to be a discriminatory practice within the meaning of Title VI or refusing federal funds, and thereby escaping from the statute's jurisdictional predicate. This is precisely the same choice as would confront recipients if suit were brought to cut off funds. Both types of actions would equally jeopardize the administrative processes so carefully structured into the law. [p387]

This Court has always required


 * that the inference of such a private cause of action not otherwise authorized by the statute must be consistent with the evident legislative intent and, of course, with the effectuation of the purposes intended to be served by the Act.

National Railroad Passenger Corp. v. National Association of Railroad Passengers, 414 U.S. 453, 458 (1974). See also Securities Investor Protection Corp. v. Barbour, 421 U.S. 412, 418-420 (1975). A private cause of action under Title VI is unable to satisfy either prong of this test.

Because each of my colleagues either has a different view or assumes a private cause of action, however, the merits of the Title VI issue must be addressed. My views in that regard, as well as my views with respect to the equal protection issue, are included in the joint opinion that my Brothers BRENNAN, MARSHALL, and BLACKMUN and I have filed.