Hunt, Governor of North Carolina v. Cromartie
The Supreme Court ruled that private individuals cannot sue in court to enforce federal regulations that ban policies with a discriminatory effect under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, even though those regulations are valid.
The decision closes off a legal avenue that advocacy groups and individuals had used for decades to challenge government programs that disproportionately harmed minorities without needing to prove intentional bias, leaving them to seek other remedies such as asking a federal agency to act or suing under a different civil rights statute.
“Like substantive federal law itself, private rights of action to enforce federal law must be created by Congress.”
The majority's core principle that courts cannot invent lawsuits Congress did not authorize.
How it got here: A federal trial court ruled for Sandoval and blocked the English-only policy; the Eleventh Circuit affirmed; Alabama's public safety director asked the Supreme Court to review only whether a private lawsuit could be brought at all.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Alabama's Department of Public Safety, which receives federal funding, decided to give driver's license exams only in English after Alabama amended its constitution to make English the state's official language. Martha Sandoval, representing a class of non-English speakers, sued to stop this policy, arguing it effectively discriminated against people based on national origin in violation of a federal regulation implementing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The question before the Court
Could a private citizen sue a state agency directly under a federal regulation that bans government policies with a discriminatory effect, even though the underlying civil rights law itself only bans intentional discrimination?
Why it matters
People who believe a government program's rules disadvantage them because of race or national origin, even without proof of intentional bias, can no longer sue directly to enforce that claim under Title VI regulations. They must instead ask a federal agency to investigate and cut off funding, or find another legal path, making these claims much harder to pursue in court.
What changes now
The ruling is final on the question presented: no private right of action exists to enforce Title VI's disparate-impact regulations. Individuals challenging similar policies must instead ask federal agencies to investigate and potentially cut off funding, or look for alternative legal routes such as suits under other civil rights statutes. The case does not decide whether Alabama's English-only policy was itself unlawful, since that question was never reached.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether the Department of Justice regulation banning discriminatory-effect policies was validly authorized by the statute, nor whether Alabama's English-only driver's license policy actually violated that regulation. It assumed the regulation's validity only for purposes of resolving the private-lawsuit question.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent — Justice Stevens
“Today, in a decision unfounded in our precedent and hostile to decades of settled expectations, a majority of this Court carves out an important exception to the right of private action long recognized under Title VI.”The dissent's central objection that the ruling breaks from established Title VI case law.
Justice Stevens argued that the Court's own precedents in Lau, Cannon, and Guardians already established that private individuals could sue to enforce Title VI's disparate-impact regulations, and that Congress had ratified this understanding through later amendments. He contended the majority drew an artificial distinction between intentional and disparate-impact discrimination that earlier cases never recognized, and would have affirmed the lower courts as a matter of both precedent and statutory interpretation.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court accepted as settled that private individuals can sue to enforce Title VI's core ban on intentional discrimination, and separately assumed without deciding that a federal regulation banning policies with a mere discriminatory effect was validly issued.
- The Court explained that a private lawsuit to enforce a regulation only exists if the underlying statute itself creates that right, because private rights to sue must come from Congress, not from courts filling in gaps they think would be good policy.
- Because the discriminatory-effect regulation bans conduct that the statute's own text permits (unintentional impact, not just intentional bias), the Court reasoned that a right to sue under the statute's language does not automatically extend to suing over the regulation.
- The Court then examined the specific provision authorizing the regulations and found it spoke only to federal agencies issuing rules, not to individuals with rights, unlike the statute's main provision which explicitly protects people from discrimination.
- The Court noted that the law already lays out a detailed process for agencies to enforce these regulations themselves, including notice and reporting requirements, which suggested Congress meant that process to be the exclusive enforcement path.
- Finding no textual signal that Congress intended a private lawsuit to enforce the effects-based regulation, the Court concluded that no such right of action exists, regardless of whether the regulation is otherwise valid.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Distinguishes Cannon v. University of Chicago (441 U.S. 677)
The Court said Cannon only addressed intentional discrimination, not a right to sue over disparate-impact regulations.
Distinguishes Guardians Assn. v. Civil Serv. Comm'n of New York City (463 U.S. 582)
The Court found Guardians never actually held a private right of action exists for the regulations at issue.
Limits Lau v. Nichols (414 U.S. 563)
The Court said it must now reject Lau's premise that the statute itself bans effects-based discrimination.