Cite as: 520 U. S. 329 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
IV-E of the Social Security Act did not give the plaintiffs the right that they asserted, we again analyzed the claim in very specific terms: whether children had a right to have state authorities undertake "reasonable efforts to prevent removal of children from their homes and to facilitate reunification of families where removal had occurred." Id., at 352 (footnote omitted). Finally, in Livadas, supra, at 134, we discerned in the structure of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) the very specific right of employees "to complete the collective-bargaining process and agree to an arbitration clause." See 512 U. S., at 133, n. 27 (explaining that whether a claim founded on the NLRA is cognizable under § 1983 may depend on whether the claim stems from abridgment of a "protected individual interest"). We did not simply ask whether the NLRA created unspecified "rights."
The Court of Appeals did not engage in such a methodical inquiry. As best we can tell, the Court of Appeals seemed to think that respondents had a right to require the Director of Arizona's child support agency to bring the State's program into substantial compliance with Title IV-D. But the requirement that a State operate its child support program in "substantial compliance" with Title IV-D was not intended to benefit individual children and custodial parents, and therefore it does not constitute a federal right. Far from creating an individual entitlement to services, the standard is simply a yardstick for the Secretary to measure the systemwide performance of a State's Title IV-D program. Thus, the Secretary must look to the aggregate services provided by the State, not to whether the needs of any particular person have been satisfied. A State substantially complies with Title IV-D when it provides most mandated services (such as enforcement of support obligations) in only 75 percent of the cases reviewed during the federal audit period. 45 CFR § 305.20(a)(3)(iii) (1995). States must aim to establish paternity in 90 percent of all eligible cases, but may satisfy considerably lower targets so long as their
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