288
Opinion of the Court
context.' " Brief for United States 14. Only three of our legion implied-right-of-action cases have found this sort of "contemporary legal context" relevant, and two of those involved Congress's enactment (or reenactment) of the verbatim statutory text that courts had previously interpreted to create a private right of action. See Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Inc. v. Curran, 456 U. S. 353, 378- 379 (1982); Cannon v. University of Chicago, 441 U. S., at 698-699. In the third case, this sort of "contemporary legal context" simply buttressed a conclusion independently supported by the text of the statute. See Thompson v. Thompson, 484 U. S. 174 (1988). We have never accorded dispositive weight to context shorn of text. In determining whether statutes create private rights of action, as in interpreting statutes generally, see Blatchford v. Native Village of Noatak, 501 U. S. 775, 784 (1991), legal context matters only to the extent it clarifies text.
We therefore begin (and find that we can end) our search for Congress's intent with the text and structure of Title VI.7 Section 602 authorizes federal agencies "to effectuate the provisions of [§ 601] . . . by issuing rules, regulations, or orders of general applicability." 42 U. S. C. § 2000d-1. It is immediately clear that the "rights-creating" language so critical to the Court's analysis in Cannon of § 601, see 441 U. S., at 690, n. 13, is completely absent from § 602. Whereas § 601 decrees that "[n]o person . . . shall . . . be subjected to discrimination," 42 U. S. C. § 2000d, the text of § 602 provides that "[e]ach Federal department and
7 Although the dissent claims that we "adop[t] a methodology that blinds itself to important evidence of congressional intent," see post, at 313, our methodology is not novel, but well established in earlier decisions (including one authored by Justice Stevens, see Northwest Airlines, Inc. v. Transport Workers, 451 U. S. 77, 94, n. 31 (1981)), which explain that the interpretive inquiry begins with the text and structure of the statute, see id., at 91, and ends once it has become clear that Congress did not provide a cause of action.
Page: Index Previous 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007