Cite as: 520 U. S. 329 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
Only twice have we found a remedial scheme sufficiently comprehensive to supplant § 1983: in Sea Clammers, supra, and Smith v. Robinson, 468 U. S. 992 (1984). In Sea Clam-mers, we focused on the "unusually elaborate enforcement provisions" of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, which placed at the disposal of the Environmental Protection Agency a panoply of enforcement options, including noncompliance orders, civil suits, and criminal penalties. 453 U. S., at 13. We emphasized that several provisions of the Act authorized private persons to initiate enforcement actions. Id., at 14, 20. We found it "hard to believe that Congress intended to preserve the § 1983 right of action when it created so many specific statutory remedies, including the two citizen-suit provisions." Id., at 20. Likewise, in Smith, the review scheme in the Education of the Handicapped Act permitted aggrieved individuals to invoke "carefully tailored" local administrative procedures followed by federal judicial review. 468 U. S., at 1009. We reasoned that Congress could not possibly have wanted parents to skip these procedures and go straight to court by way of § 1983, since that would have "render[ed] superfluous most of the detailed procedural protections outlined in the statute." Id., at 1011.
We have also stressed that a plaintiff's ability to invoke § 1983 cannot be defeated simply by "[t]he availability of administrative mechanisms to protect the plaintiff's interests." Golden State, supra, at 106. Thus, in Wright, we rejected the argument that the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development's "generalized powers" to audit local public housing authorities, to enforce annual contributions contracts, and to cut off federal funding demonstrated a congressional intention to prevent public housing tenants from using § 1983 to enforce their rights under the federal Housing Act. 479 U. S., at 428. We reached much the same conclusion in Wilder, where the Secretary of Health and Human Services
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