Cite as: 536 U. S. 273 (2002)
Opinion of the Court
bition. For reasons expressed repeatedly in our prior cases, however, such provisions cannot make out the requisite congressional intent to confer individual rights enforceable by § 1983.7
Our conclusion that FERPA's nondisclosure provisions fail to confer enforceable rights is buttressed by the mechanism that Congress chose to provide for enforcing those provisions. Congress expressly authorized the Secretary of Education to "deal with violations" of the Act, § 1232g(f) (emphasis added), and required the Secretary to "establish or designate [a] review board" for investigating and adjudicating such violations, § 1232g(g). Pursuant to these provisions, the Secretary created the Family Policy Compliance Office (FPCO) "to act as the Review Board required under the Act [and] to enforce the Act with respect to all applicable programs." 34 CFR §§ 99.60(a) and (b) (2001). The FPCO permits students and parents who suspect a violation of the Act to file individual written complaints. § 99.63. If a complaint is timely and contains required information, the FPCO will initiate an investigation, §§ 99.64(a)-(b), notify the educational institution of the charge, § 99.65(a), and request a written response, § 99.65. If a violation is found, the FPCO distributes a notice of factual findings and a "statement of the specific steps that the agency or institution must take to comply" with FERPA. §§ 99.66(b) and (c)(1). These admin-7 Justice Stevens would have us look to other provisions in FERPA that use the term "rights" to define the obligations of educational institutions that receive federal funds. See post, at 293-294, 296. He then suggests that any reference to "rights," even as a shorthand means of describing standards and procedures imposed on funding recipients, should give rise to a statute's enforceability under § 1983. Ibid. This argument was rejected in Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman, 451 U. S. 1, 18-20 (1981) (no presumption of enforceability merely because a statute "speaks in terms of 'rights' "), and it is particularly misplaced here since Congress enacted FERPA years before Thiboutot declared that statutes can ever give rise to rights enforceable by § 1983.
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