BARNES, IN HER OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS MEMBER OF THE BOARD OF POLICE COMMISSIONERS OF KANSAS CITY MISSOURI, ET AL. v. GORMAN
No. 01-682
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Argued April 23, 2002—Decided June 17, 2002
536 U.S. 181
Lawrence S. Robbins argued the cause for petitioners. With him on the briefs were Roy T. Englert, Jr., Alan E. Untereiner, Arnon D. Siegel, and Dale H. Close.
Gregory G. Garre argued the cause for the United States as amicus curiae urging reversal. With him on the brief were Solicitor General Olson, Assistant Attorneys General Boyd and McCallum, Deputy Solicitor General Clement, Jessica Dunsay Silver, and Gregory B. Friel.
Scott L. Nelson argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief were Brian Wolfman, John M. Simpson, and Connie Knight Sieracki.*
*Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were filed for the State of Hawaii et al. by Earl I. Anzai, Attorney General of Hawaii, and Dorothy D. Sellers and Adina L. K. Cunningham, Deputy Attorneys General, joined by Robert R. Rigsby, Corporation Counsel of the District of Columbia, and the Attorneys General for their respective States as follows: Robert A. Butterworth of Florida, Steve Carter of Indiana, G. Steven Rowe of Maine, J. Joseph Curran, Jr., of Maryland, Don Stenberg of Nebraska, Frankie Sue Del Papa of Nevada, David Samson of New Jersey, Wayne Stenehjem of North Dakota, Betty D. Montgomery of Ohio, W. A. Drew Edmondson of Oklahoma, Hardy Myers of Oregon, Mark L. Shurtleff of Utah, and Hoke MacMillan of Wyoming; for the California Municipalities et al. by Samuel L. Jackson, Pamela Albers, Michael G. Colantuono, Ronald R. Ball, Michael F. Dean, John L. Cook, Charles E. Dickerson III,
Jeffrey Robert White filed a brief for the Association of Trial Lawyers of America et al. as amici curiae urging affirmance.
JUSTICE SCALIA delivered the opinion of the Court.
We must decide whether punitive damages may be awarded in a private cause of action brought under § 202 of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), 104 Stat. 337,
I
Respondent Jeffrey Gorman, a paraplegic, is confined to a wheelchair and lacks voluntary control over his lower torso, including his bladder, forcing him to wear a catheter attached to a urine bag around his waist. In May 1992, he was arrested for trespass after fighting with a bouncer at a Kansas City, Missouri, nightclub. While waiting for a police van to transport him to the station, he was denied permission to use a restroom to empty his urine bag. When the van arrived, it was not equipped to receive respondent‘s wheelchair. Over respondent‘s objection, the officers removed him from his wheelchair and used a seatbelt and his own belt to strap him to a narrow bench in the rear of the van. During the ride to the police station, respondent released his seatbelt, fearing it placed excessive pressure on his urine bag. Eventually, the other belt came loose and respondent fell to the floor, rupturing his urine bag and injuring his shoulder and back. The driver, the only officer in the van, finding it impossible to lift respondent, fastened him to a support for the remainder of the trip. Upon arriv
Respondent brought suit against petitioners—members of the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners, the chief of police, and the officer who drove the van—in the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri. The suit claimed petitioners had discriminated against respondent on the basis of his disability, in violation of § 202 of the ADA and § 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, by failing to maintain appropriate policies for the arrest and transportation of persons with spinal cord injuries.
A jury found petitioners liable and awarded over $1 million in compensatory damages and $1.2 million in punitive damages. The District Court vacated the punitive damages award, holding that punitive damages are unavailable in suits under § 202 of the ADA and § 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reversed, relying on this Court‘s decision in Franklin v. Gwinnett County Public Schools, 503 U. S. 60, 70–71 (1992), which stated the “general rule” that “absent clear direction to the contrary by Congress, the federal courts have the power to award any appropriate relief in a cognizable cause of action brought pursuant to a federal statute.” Punitive damages are appropriate relief, the Eighth Circuit held, because they are “an integral part of the common law tradition and the judicial arsenal,” 257 F. 3d 738, 745 (2001), and Congress did nothing to disturb this tradition in enacting or amending the relevant statutes, id., at 747. We granted certiorari. 534 U. S. 1103 (2002).
II
Section 202 of the ADA prohibits discrimination against the disabled by public entities; § 504 of the Rehabilitation Act
Although Title VI does not mention a private right of action, our prior decisions have found an implied right of action, e. g., Cannon v. University of Chicago, 441 U. S. 677, 703 (1979), and Congress has acknowledged this right in amendments to the statute, leaving it “beyond dispute that private individuals may sue to enforce” Title VI, Alexander v. Sandoval, 532 U. S. 275, 280 (2001). It is less clear what remedies are available in such a suit. In Franklin, supra, at 73, we recognized “the traditional presumption in favor of any appropriate relief for violation of a federal right,” and held that since this presumption applies to suits under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972,
Title VI invokes Congress‘s power under the Spending Clause,
The same analogy applies, we think, in determining the scope of damages remedies. We said as much in Gebser: “Title IX‘s contractual nature has implications for our construction of the scope of available remedies.” 524 U. S., at 287. One of these implications, we believe, is that a remedy is “appropriate relief,” Franklin, 503 U. S., at 73, only if the funding recipient is on notice that, by accepting federal funding, it exposes itself to liability of that nature. A funding recipient is generally on notice that it is subject not only to those remedies explicitly provided in the relevant legislation, but also to those remedies traditionally available in suits for breach of contract. Thus we have held that under Title IX, which contains no express remedies, a recipient of federal funds is nevertheless subject to suit for compensatory damages, id., at 76, and injunction, Cannon, supra, at 711–712, forms of relief traditionally available in suits for breach of contract. See, e. g., Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 357 (1981); 3 S. Williston, Law of Contracts §§ 1445–1450 (1920); J. Pomeroy, A Treatise on the Specific Performance of Contracts 1–5 (1879). Like Title IX, Title VI mentions no remedies—indeed, it fails to mention even a private right of action (hence this Court‘s decision finding an implied right of action in Cannon). But punitive damages, unlike compensatory damages and injunction, are generally not available for breach of contract, see 3 E. Farnsworth, Contracts § 12.8,
Nor (if such an interpretive technique were available) could an implied punitive damages provision reasonably be found in Title VI. Some authorities say that reasonably implied contractual terms are those that the parties would have agreed to if they had adverted to the matters in question. See 2 Farnsworth, supra, § 7.16, at 335, and authorities cited. More recent commentary suggests that reasonably implied contractual terms are simply those that “compor[t] with community standards of fairness,” Restatement (Second) of Contracts, supra, § 204, Comment d; see also 2 Farnsworth, supra, § 7.16, at 334–336. Neither approach would support the implication here of a remedy that is not normally available for contract actions and that is of indeterminate magnitude. We have acknowledged that compensatory damages alone “might well exceed a recipient‘s level of federal funding,” Gebser, supra, at 290; punitive damages on top of that could well be disastrous. Not only is it doubtful that funding recipients would have agreed to exposure to such unorthodox and indeterminate liability; it is doubtful whether they would even have accepted the funding if punitive damages liability was a required condition. “Without doubt, the scope of potential damages liability is one of the most significant factors a school would consider in deciding whether to receive federal funds.” Davis, supra, at 656 (KENNEDY, J., dissenting). And for the same reason of unusual and disproportionate exposure, it can hardly be said that community standards of fairness support such an implication. In sum, it must be concluded that Title VI funding recipients have not, merely by accepting funds, implicitly consented to liability for punitive damages.2
Our conclusion is consistent with the “well settled” rule that “where legal rights have been invaded, and a federal statute provides for a general right to sue for such invasion, federal courts may use any available remedy to make good the wrong done.” Bell v. Hood, 327 U. S. 678, 684 (1946); see also Franklin, supra, at 66. When a federal-funds recipient violates conditions of Spending Clause legislation, the wrong done is the failure to provide what the contractual obligation requires; and that wrong is “made good” when the recipient compensates the Federal Government or a third-party beneficiary (as in this case) for the loss caused by that failure. See Guardians, 463 U. S., at 633 (Marshall, J., dissenting) (“When a court concludes that a recipient has breached its contract, it should enforce the broken promise by protecting the expectation that the recipient would not discriminate. . . . The obvious way to do this is to put private parties in as good a position as they would have been had the contract been performed“). Punitive damages are not compensatory, and are therefore not embraced within the rule described in Bell.
* * *
Because punitive damages may not be awarded in private suits brought under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, it follows that they may not be awarded in suits brought under § 202 of the ADA and § 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.3 This
It is so ordered.
JUSTICE SOUTER, with whom JUSTICE O‘CONNOR joins, concurring.
I join the Court‘s opinion because I agree that analogy to the common law of contract is appropriate in this instance, with the conclusion that punitive damages are not available under the statute. Punitive damages, as the Court points out, may range in orders of “indeterminate magnitude,”
JUSTICE STEVENS, with whom JUSTICE GINSBURG and JUSTICE BREYER join, concurring in the judgment.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals might be reversed on any of three different theories: (1) as the Court held in Newport v. Fact Concerts, Inc., 453 U. S. 247 (1981), absent clear congressional intent to the contrary, municipalities are not subject to punitive damages; (2) an analysis of the text and legislative history of § 504 of Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) indicates that Congress did not intend to authorize a punitive damages remedy for violations of either statute;1 or (3) applying reasoning akin to that used in Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman, 451 U. S. 1 (1981), that the remedies for violations of federal statutes enacted pursuant to Congress’ spending power should be defined by the common law of contracts, third-party beneficiaries are not allowed to recover punitive damages.
Petitioners did not rely on either the first or the third of those theories in either the District Court or the Court of Appeals. Nevertheless, because it presents the narrowest basis for resolving the case, I am convinced that it is an appropriate exercise of judicial restraint to decide the case
In Pennhurst we were faced with the question whether the Developmentally Disabled Assistance and Bill of Rights Act,
The case before us today involves a municipality‘s breach of a condition that simply prohibits certain discriminatory conduct. The prohibition is set forth in two statutes, one of which, Title II of the ADA, was not enacted pursuant to the Spending Clause. Our opinion in Pennhurst says nothing about the remedy that might be appropriate for such a breach. Nor do I believe that the rules of contract law on which the Court relies are necessarily relevant to the tortious conduct described in this record. Moreover, the Court‘s novel reliance on what has been, at most, a useful analogy to contract law has potentially far-reaching consequences that go well beyond the issues briefed and argued
Accordingly, I do not join the Court‘s opinion, although I do concur in its judgment in this case.