Cite as: 520 U. S. 329 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
Respondents are five Arizona mothers (some of whom receive AFDC benefits) whose children are eligible for Title IV-D child support services. They filed this lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Arizona against the Director of the Arizona Department of Economic Security, the state agency charged with providing child support services under Title IV-D. In a lengthy complaint, respondents claimed that they had properly applied for child support services but that, despite their good faith efforts to cooperate, the agency never took adequate steps to obtain child support payments from the fathers of their children. These omissions, respondents contended, were largely attributable to structural defects in the State's child support efforts: staff shortages, high caseloads, unmanageable backlogs, and deficiencies in the State's accounting methods and recordkeeping. App. 11, 14-16. Respondents sought to represent a class of all children and custodial parents residing in Arizona who are or will be entitled to Title IV-D services.
Respondents claimed that the State's systemic failures violated their federal rights under Title IV-D. Invoking 42 U. S. C. § 1983, they asked the District Court to grant them the following broad relief:
"Enter a declaratory judgment determining that operation of the Arizona Title IV-D program violates controlling, substantive provisions of federal law creating rights in plaintiffs and the class enforceable through an action permitted by 42 U. S. C. § 1983. "Grant permanent (and as necessary and appropriate, interlocutory) injunctions prohibiting continued adherence to the aforesaid pattern and practices and requiring affirmative measures sufficient to achieve as well as sustain substantial compliance with federal law, throughout all programmatic operations at issue." App. 42.
The Director immediately moved to dismiss the complaint on several grounds, arguing primarily that Title IV-D cre-
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