280
Opinion of the Court
U. S. 677 (1979), the Court held that a private right of action existed to enforce Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, 86 Stat. 373, as amended, 20 U. S. C. § 1681 et seq. The reasoning of that decision embraced the existence of a private right to enforce Title VI as well. "Title IX," the Court noted, "was patterned after Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964." 441 U. S., at 694. And, "[i]n 1972 when Title IX was enacted, the [parallel] language in Title VI had already been construed as creating a private remedy." Id., at 696. That meant, the Court reasoned, that Congress had intended Title IX, like Title VI, to provide a private cause of action. Id., at 699, 703, 710-711. Congress has since ratified Cannon's holding. Section 1003 of the Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1986, 100 Stat. 1845, 42 U. S. C. § 2000d-7, expressly abrogated States' sovereign immunity against suits brought in federal court to enforce Title VI and provided that in a suit against a State "remedies (including remedies both at law and in equity) are available . . . to the same extent as such remedies are available . . . in the suit against any public or private entity other than a State," § 2000d-7(a)(2). We recognized in Franklin v. Gwinnett County Public Schools, 503 U. S. 60 (1992), that § 2000d-7 "cannot be read except as a validation of Cannon's holding." Id., at 72; see also id., at 78 (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment) (same). It is thus beyond dispute that private individuals may sue to enforce § 601.
Second, it is similarly beyond dispute—and no party disagrees—that § 601 prohibits only intentional discrimination. In Regents of Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke, 438 U. S. 265 (1978), the Court reviewed a decision of the California Supreme Court that had enjoined the University of California Medical School from "according any consideration to race in its admissions process." Id., at 272. Essential to the Court's holding reversing that aspect of the California court's decision was the determination that § 601 "proscribe[s] only those racial classifications that would violate the Equal Pro-
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