298
Stevens, J., dissenting
ministrative avenues fall far short of what is necessary to overcome the presumption of enforceability. We have only found a comprehensive administrative scheme precluding enforceability under § 1983 in two of our past cases—Middlesex County Sewerage Authority v. National Sea Clammers Assn., 453 U. S. 1 (1981), and Smith v. Robinson, 468 U. S. 992 (1984). In Sea Clammers, the relevant statute not only had "unusually elaborate enforcement provisions," but it also permitted private citizens to bring enforcement actions in court. 453 U. S., at 13-14. In Smith, the statute at issue provided for "carefully tailored" administrative proceedings followed by federal judicial review. 468 U. S., at 1009. In contrast, FERPA provides no guaranteed access to a formal administrative proceeding or to federal judicial review; rather, it leaves to administrative discretion the decision whether to follow up on individual complaints. As we said in Blessing, 520 U. S., at 348, the enforcement scheme here is "far more limited than those in Sea Clammers and Smith," and thus does not preclude enforcement under § 1983.5
5 The Court does not test FERPA's administrative scheme against the "comprehensive enforcement scheme," Blessing, 520 U. S., at 341, standard for rebutting the presumptive enforceability of a federal right, ante, at 290, n. 8, because it concludes that there is no federal right to trigger this additional analysis. Yet, at the same time, the Court imports "enforcement scheme" considerations into the initial question whether the statute creates a presumptively enforceable right. See ante, at 289 ("Our conclusion that FERPA's nondisclosure provisions fail to confer enforceable rights is buttressed by the mechanism that Congress chose to provide for enforcing [FERPA violations]"). Folding such considerations into the rights question renders the rebuttal inquiry superfluous. Moreover, the Court's approach is inconsistent with our past cases, which have kept separate the inquiries whether there is a right and whether an enforcement scheme rebuts presumptive enforceability. Thus, the Court's discussion of the schemes in Wright v. Roanoke Redevelopment and Housing Authority, 479 U. S. 418 (1987), and Wilder v. Virginia Hospital Assn., 496 U. S. 498 (1990), is inapposite, see ante, at 289-290, because neither of those cases considered the existence of an enforcement scheme relevant to whether a federal right had been created in the first instance.
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