95-1441.ZO Opinion

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SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
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No. 95-1441
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LINDA J. BLESSING, DIRECTOR, ARIZONA
DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMIC SECURITY,
PETITIONER v. CATHY FREE-
STONE, etc., et al.
on writ of certiorari to the united states court
of appeals for the ninth circuit
[April 21, 1997]

Justice O'Connor delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case concerns a lawsuit brought by five mothers
in Arizona whose children are eligible to receive child
support services from the State pursuant to Title IV-D
of the Social Security Act, as added, 88 Stat. 2351 and
as amended, 42 U. S. C. A. 651-669b (Nov. 1996
Supp.). These custodial parents sued the director of
Arizona's child support agency under Rev. Stat. 1979,
42 U. S. C. 1983, claiming that they had an enforceable
individual right to have the State's program achieve
-substantial compliance- with the requirements of Title
IV-D. Without distinguishing among the numerous
provisions of this complex program, the Court of Appeals
for the Ninth Circuit held that respondents had such a
right. We disagree that the statutory scheme can be
analyzed so generally, and hold that Title IV-D does not
give individuals a federal right to force a state agency
to substantially comply with Title IV-D. Accordingly,
we vacate and remand with instructions to remand to
the District Court.

I
This controversy concerns an interlocking set of
cooperative federal-state welfare programs. Arizona
participates in the federal Aid to Families with Depend-
ent Children (AFDC) program, which provides subsis-
tence welfare benefits to needy families. Social Security
Act, Title IV-A, 42 U. S. C. 601-617. To qualify for
federal AFDC funds, the State must certify that it will
operate a child support enforcement program that
conforms with the numerous requirements set forth in
Title IV-D of the Social Security Act, 42 U. S. C. A.
651-669b (Nov. 1996 Supp.), and will do so pursuant
to a detailed plan that has been approved by the
Secretary of Health and Human Services (Secretary).
602(a)(2); see also 652(a)(3). The Federal Government
underwrites roughly two-thirds of the cost of the State's
child support efforts. 655(a). But the State must do
more than simply collect overdue support payments; it
must also establish a comprehensive system to establish
paternity, locate absent parents, and help families obtain
support orders. 651, 654.
A State must provide these services free of charge to
AFDC recipients and, when requested, for a nominal fee
to children and custodial parents who are not receiving
AFDC payments. 651, 654(4). AFDC recipients must
assign their child support rights to the State and fully
cooperate with the State's efforts to establish paternity
and obtain support payments. Although the State may
keep most of the support payments that it collects on
behalf of AFDC families in order to offset the costs of
providing welfare benefits, until recently it only had to
distribute the first $50 of each payment to the family.
42 U. S. C. 657(b)(1). The amended version of Title
IV-D replaces this $50 pass-through with more generous
distributions to families once they leave welfare. 42
U. S. C. A. 657(a)(2) (Nov. 1996 Supp.). Non-AFDC
recipients who request the State's aid are entitled to
have all collected funds passed through. 657(a)(3). In
all cases, the State must distribute the family's share of
collected support payments within two business days
after receipt. 654b(c)(1).
The structure of each State's Title IV-D agency, like
the services it provides, must conform to federal guide-
lines. For example, States must create separate units
to administer the plan, 654(3), and to disburse collected
funds, 654(27), each of which must be staffed at levels
set by the Secretary, 45 CFR 303.20 (1995). If a State
delegates its disbursement function to local governments,
it must reward the most efficient local agencies with a
share of federal incentive payments. 42 U. S. C. A.
654(22) (Nov. 1996 Supp.). To maintain detailed
records of all pending cases, as well as to generate the
various reports required by federal authorities, States
must set up computer systems that meet numerous
federal specifications. 654a. Finally, in addition to
setting up this administrative framework, each partici-
pating State must enact laws designed to streamline
paternity and child support actions. 654(20), 666.
To oversee this complex federal-state enterprise, Con-
gress created the Office of Child Support Enforcement
(OCSE) within the Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS). This agency is charged with auditing
the States' compliance with their federally approved
plans. Audits must occur at least once every three
years, or more often if a State's performance falls below
certain standards. 652(a)(4). If a State does not
-substantially comply- with the requirements of Title
IV-D, the Secretary is authorized to penalize the State
by reducing its AFDC grant by up to five percent.
609(a)(8). The Secretary has interpreted -substantial
compliance- as: (a) full compliance with requirements
that services be offered statewide and that certain
recipients be notified monthly of the support collected,
as well as with reporting, recordkeeping, and accounting
rules; (b) 90 percent compliance with case opening and
case closure criteria; and (c) 75 percent compliance with
most remaining program requirements. 45 CFR 305.20
(1995). The Secretary may suspend a penalty if the
State implements an adequate corrective action plan,
and if the program achieves -substantial compliance,-
she may rescind the penalty entirely. 42 U. S. C. A.
609(c) (Nov. 1996 Supp.).

II
Arizona's record of enforcing child support obligations
is less than stellar, particularly compared with those of
other States. In a 1992 report, Arizona's Auditor
General chronicled many of the State's problems. In the
1989-1990 fiscal year, Arizona failed to collect enough
child support payments and federal incentives to cover
the administrative costs of its Title IV-D program-1 of
only 10 States to fall below that target. Arizona Auditor
General, A Performance Audit of the Arizona Depart-
ment of Economic Security 2 (1992). The Auditor
General also pointed out that the cost-effectiveness of
Arizona's support enforcement efforts had been -mini-
mal.- For every dollar spent on enforcement, the State
collected barely two dollars-almost half the nationwide
average. Ibid. In 1992, nearly three-quarters of
Arizona's 275,000 child support cases were still in the
earliest stages of the enforcement process. In 42
percent of all cases, paternity had yet to be established.
In a further 29 percent, the absent parent had been
identified but his or her whereabouts were unknown.
Id., at 12. Overall, the Auditor General found that
Arizona -obtains regular child support payments for
fewer than five percent of the parents it serves.- Id.,
at 9.
Federal audits by OCSE have also identified shortcom-
ings in Arizona's child support system. In several
reviews of the State's performance from 1984 to 1989,
the Secretary found that Arizona had not substantially
complied with significant program requirements, and she
repeatedly penalized the State one percent of its AFDC
grant. The State developed a corrective action plan
after each failed audit, which prompted the Secretary to
suspend and-in every instance but one-waive the one-
percent reduction in Arizona's AFDC funding.
Respondents are five Arizona mothers (some of whom
receive AFDC benefits) whose children are eligible for
Title IV-D child support services. They filed this
lawsuit in the United States District Court for the
District of Arizona against the Director of the Arizona
Department of Economic Security, the state agency
charged with providing child support services under Title
IV-D. In a lengthy complaint, respondents claimed that
they had properly applied for child support services but
that, despite their good faith efforts to cooperate, the
agency never took adequate steps to obtain child support
payments from the fathers of their children. These
omissions, respondents contended, were largely attribut-
able to structural defects in the State's child support
efforts: staff shortages, high caseloads, unmanageable
backlogs, and deficiencies in the State's accounting
methods and recordkeeping. App. 11, 14-16. Respond-
ents sought to represent a class of all children and
custodial parents residing in Arizona who are or will be
entitled to Title IV-D services.
Respondents claimed that the State's systemic failures
violated their federal rights under Title IV-D. Invoking
42 U. S. C. 1983, they asked the District Court to
grant them the following broad relief:
-Enter a declaratory judgment determining that
operation of the Arizona Title IV-D program violates
controlling, substantive provisions of federal law
creating rights in plaintiffs and the class enforceable
through an action permitted by 42 U. S. C. 1983.
-Grant permanent (and as necessary and appropri-
ate, interlocutory) injunctions prohibiting continued
adherence to the aforesaid pattern and practices and
requiring affirmative measures sufficient to achieve
as well as sustain substantial compliance with
federal law, throughout all programmatic operations
at issue.- App. 42.
The Director immediately moved to dismiss the com-
plaint on several grounds, arguing primarily that Title
IV-D creates no individual rights enforceable under
1983. The District Court treated this motion as one for
summary judgment and ruled in favor of the Director.
Relying primarily on a decision of the Court of Appeals
for the Sixth Circuit, Carelli v. Howser, 923 F. 2d 1208
(1991), the District Court held that Congress had
foreclosed private actions to enforce Title IV-D by
authorizing the Secretary to audit and cut off funds to
States with programs that do not substantially comply
with Title IV-D's requirements.
A divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth
Circuit reversed. 68 F. 3d 1141 (1995). The majority
identified the three principal factors this Court has used
to determine whether a statute creates a privately
enforceable right: whether the plaintiff is one of the
-intended beneficiaries of the statute,- whether the
plaintiffs' asserted interests are not so -`vague and
amorphous' as to be `beyond the competence of the
judiciary to enforce,'- and whether the statute imposes
a binding obligation on the State. Id., at 1147 (quoting
Wilder v. Virginia Hospital Assn., 496 U. S. 498, 509
(1990)). Title IV-D, the Court of Appeals held, satisfied
each of these criteria. First, -needy families with
children- were the intended beneficiaries of Title IV-D.
68 F. 3d, at 1150. Second, the majority held that the
-plaintiffs' asserted interest is not vague or amorphous,
and it is sufficiently concrete to be judicially enforceable-
because whether a State delivers the services required
by Title IV-D -to the degree required by law is judi-
cially ascertainable.- Id., at 1149-1150. Finally, the
Court of Appeals stated that the statute imposes binding
obligations because a State must satisfy each of the
requirements spelled out in Title IV-D in order to
receive AFDC funding. Although the majority acknowl-
edged that the requirement that a State remain in
-substantial compliance- with its plan might seem
ambiguous when divorced from context, the majority
believed that the -highly detailed requirements- of the
statute and its implementing regulations adequately
notified the State of the extent of its duties. Id., at
1148. Moreover, the Court of Appeals noted that -the
statute . . . sets forth detailed criteria for measuring
compliance with the statute,- for example generally
requiring States to establish paternity in a given
percentage of all cases. Id., at 1149 (citing 42 U. S. C.
652(g)). Accordingly, the Court of Appeals concluded
that respondents could sue petitioner under 1983 to
bring Arizona's child support enforcement program into
substantial compliance with federal law. 68 F. 3d,
at 1150.
The Court of Appeals also disagreed with the District
Court's conclusion that Congress had implicitly fore-
closed an individual remedy under 1983 for violations
of Title IV-D. The majority noted that Title IV-D
includes no provisions for judicial enforcement that
might supplant the 1983 remedy. 68 F. 3d, at 1153.
Instead, the law simply gave the Secretary administra-
tive oversight powers that were virtually indiscernible
from those we had found insufficient to displace 1983
liability in Wright v. Roanoke Redevelopment and
Housing Authority, 479 U. S. 418 (1987). The majority
expressed no opinion as to the appropriateness of either
injunctive or declaratory relief, and left that question for
the District Court to answer in the first instance. 68
F. 3d, at 1156.
Judge Kleinfeld dissented, arguing that Congress
placed the power to enforce Title IV-D exclusively in the
hands of the Secretary. He contended that the -`sub-
stantial compliance' standard does not `unambiguously
confer' enforceable rights on any individual.- Id., at
1157. At most, Title IV-D called upon States -to try
pretty hard, and do a pretty good job, of enforcing child
support, and come up with a plan to try harder if the
Secretary thinks they have not been trying hard
enough.- Ibid.
We granted certiorari to resolve disagreement among
the courts of appeals as to whether individuals may sue
state officials under 1983 for violations of Title IV-D.

III
Section 1983 imposes liability on anyone who, under
color of state law, deprives a person -of any rights,
privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution
and laws.- We have held that this provision safeguards
certain rights conferred by federal statutes. Maine v.
Thiboutot, 448 U. S. 1 (1980). In order to seek redress
through 1983, however, a plaintiff must assert the
violation of a federal right, not merely a violation of
federal law. Golden State Transit Corp. v. Los Angeles,
493 U. S. 103, 106 (1989). We have traditionally looked
at three factors when determining whether a particular
statutory provision gives rise to a federal right. First,
Congress must have intended that the provision in
question benefit the plaintiff. Wright, 479 U. S., at 430.
Second, the plaintiff must demonstrate that the right
assertedly protected by the statute is not so -vague and
amorphous- that its enforcement would strain judicial
competence. Id., at 431-432. Third, the statute must
unambiguously impose a binding obligation on the
States. In other words, the provision giving rise to the
asserted right must be couched in mandatory rather
than precatory terms. Wilder, supra, at 510-511; see
also Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman,
451 U. S. 1, 17 (1981) (discussing whether Congress
created obligations giving rise to an implied cause of
action).
Even if a plaintiff demonstrates that a federal statute
creates an individual right, there is only a rebuttable
presumption that the right is enforceable under 1983.
Because our inquiry focuses on congressional intent,
dismissal is proper if Congress -specifically foreclosed a
remedy under 1983.- Smith v. Robinson, 468 U. S.
992, 1005, n. 9 (1984). Congress may do so expressly,
by forbidding recourse to 1983 in the statute itself, or
impliedly, by creating a comprehensive enforcement
scheme that is incompatible with individual enforcement
under 1983. Livadas v. Bradshaw, 512 U. S. 107, 133
(1994).

A
With these principles in mind, we turn first to the
question whether respondents have established that Title
IV-D gives them federal rights.
In their complaint, respondents argued that federal
law granted them -individual rights to all mandated
services delivered in substantial compliance with Title
IV-D and its implementing regulations.- App. 41. They
sought a broad injunction requiring the director of
Arizona's child support agency to achieve -substantial
compliance . . . throughout all programmatic operations.-
Id., at 42. Attributing the deficiencies in the State's
program primarily to staff shortages and other structural
defects, respondents essentially invited the District Court
to oversee every aspect of Arizona's Title IV-D program.
Without distinguishing among the numerous rights
that might have been created by this federally funded
welfare program, the Court of Appeals agreed in sweep-
ing terms that -Title IV-D creates enforceable rights in
families in need of Title IV-D services.- 68 F. 3d, at
1150. The Court of Appeals did not specify exactly
which -rights- it was purporting to recognize, but it
apparently believed that federal law gave respondents
the right to have the State substantially comply with
Title IV-D in all respects. We disagree.
As an initial matter, the lower court's holding that
Title IV-D -creates enforceable rights- paints with too
broad a brush. It was incumbent upon respondents to
identify with particularity the rights they claimed, since
it is impossible to determine whether Title IV-D, as an
undifferentiated whole, gives rise to undefined -rights.-
Only when the complaint is broken down into manage-
able analytic bites can a court ascertain whether each
separate claim satisfies the various criteria we have set
forth for determining whether a federal statute creates
rights. See, e.g., Golden State, supra, at 106 (asking
whether the -provision in question- was designed to
benefit the plaintiff).
In prior cases, we have been able to determine
whether or not a statute created a given right because
the plaintiffs articulated, and lower courts evaluated,
well-defined claims. In Wright, for example, we held
that tenants of public housing projects had a right to
have their utility costs included within a rental payment
that did not exceed 30 percent of their income. We did
not ask whether the federal housing legislation generally
gave rise to rights; rather, we focused our analysis on a
specific statutory provision limiting -rent- to 30 percent
of a tenant's income. 479 U. S., at 430. Similarly, in
Wilder, we held that health care providers had an
enforceable right to reimbursement at -reasonable and
adequate rates- as required by a particular provision in
the Medicaid statute. 496 U. S., at 511-512. And in
Suter v. Artist M., 503 U. S. 347 (1992), where we held
that Title IV-E of the Social Security Act did not give
the plaintiffs the right that they asserted, we again
analyzed the claim in very specific terms: whether
children had a right to have state authorities undertake
-reasonable efforts to prevent removal of children from
their homes and to facilitate reunification of families
where removal had occurred.- Id., at at 352 (footnote
omitted). Finally, in Livadas v. Bradshaw, supra, at
134, we discerned in the structure of the National Labor
Relations Act the very specific right of employees -to
complete the collective-bargaining process and agree to
an arbitration clause.- See id., at 133, n. 27 (explaining
that whether a claim founded on the NLRA is cognizable
under 1983 may depend on whether the claim stems
from abridgment of a -protected individual interest-).
We did not simply ask whether the NLRA created
unspecified -rights.-
The Court of Appeals did not engage in such a
methodical inquiry. As best we can tell, the Court of
Appeals seemed to think that respondents had a right to
require the director of Arizona's child support agency to
bring the State's program into substantial compliance
with Title IV-D. But the requirement that a State
operate its child support program in -substantial
compliance- with Title IV-D was not intended to benefit
individual children and custodial parents, and therefore
it does not constitute a federal right. Far from creating
an individual entitlement to services, the standard is
simply a yardstick for the Secretary to measure the
systemwide performance of a State's Title IV-D program.
Thus, the Secretary must look to the aggregate services
provided by the State, not to whether the needs of any
particular person have been satisfied. A State substan-
tially complies with Title IV-D when it provides most
mandated services (such as enforcement of support
obligations) in only 75 percent of the cases reviewed
during the federal audit period. 45 CFR 305.20(a)
(3)(iii) (1995). States must aim to establish paternity in
90 percent of all eligible cases, but may satisfy consider-
ably lower targets so long as their efforts are steadily
improving. 42 U. S. C. 652(g). It is clear, then, that
even when a State is in -substantial compliance- with
Title IV-D, any individual plaintiff might still be among
the 10 or 25 percent of persons whose needs ultimately
go unmet. Moreover, even upon a finding of substantial
noncompliance, the Secretary can merely reduce the
State's AFDC grant by up to five percent; she cannot, by
force of her own authority, command the State to take
any particular action or to provide any services to
certain individuals. In short, the substantial compliance
standard is designed simply to trigger penalty provisions
that increase the frequency of audits and reduce the
State's AFDC grant by a maximum of five percent. As
such, it does not give rise to individual rights.
The Court of Appeals erred not only in finding that
individuals have an enforceable right to substantial
compliance, but also in taking a blanket approach to
determining whether Title IV-D creates rights. It is
readily apparent that many other provisions of that
multifaceted statutory scheme do not fit our traditional
three criteria for identifying statutory rights. To begin
with, many provisions, like the -substantial compliance-
standard, are designed only to guide the State in
structuring its systemwide efforts at enforcing support
obligations. These provisions may ultimately benefit
individuals who are eligible for Title IV-D services, but
only indirectly. For example, Title IV-D lays out
detailed requirements for the State's data processing

system. Among other things, this system must sort
information into standardized data elements specified by
the Secretary; transmit information electronically to the
State's AFDC system to monitor family eligibility for
financial assistance; maintain the data necessary to meet
federal reporting requirements; and provide for the
electronic transfer of funds for purposes of income
withholding and interstate collections. 42 U. S. C. A.
654a (Nov. 1996 Supp.); 45 CFR 307.10 (1995).
Obviously, these complex standards do not give rise to
individualized rights to computer services. They are
simply intended to improve the overall efficiency of the
States' child support enforcement scheme.
The same reasoning applies to the staffing levels of
the state agency, which respondents seem to claim are
inadequate. App. 11 (Complaint -39) (alleging that
delays in case processing are attributable to -extraordi-
nary staff shortages, inordinately high caseloads and
unmanageable backlogs-). Title IV-D generally requires
each participating State to establish a separate child
support enforcement unit -which meets such staffing and
organizational requirements as the Secretary may by
regulation prescribe.- 42 U. S. C. 654(3). The regula-
tions, in turn, simply provide that each level of the
State's organization must have -sufficient staff- to fulfill
specified functions. These mandates do not, however,
give rise to federal rights. For one thing, the link
between increased staffing and the services provided to
any particular individual is far too tenuous to support
the notion that Congress meant to give each and every
Arizonan who is eligible for Title IV-D the right to have
the State Department of Economic Security staffed at a
-sufficient- level. Furthermore, neither the statute nor
the regulation gives any guidance as to how large a staff
would be -sufficient.- Cf. Suter, 503 U. S., at 360
(finding requirement of -reasonable efforts- unenforceable
where there was -[n]o further statutory guidance . . . as
to how `reasonable efforts' are to be measured-). En-
forcement of such an undefined standard would certainly
-strain judicial competence.- Livadas v. Bradshaw, 512
U. S., at 132.
We do not foreclose the possibility that some provi-
sions of Title IV-D give rise to individual rights. The
lower court did not separate out the particular rights it
believed arise from the statutory scheme, and we think
the complaint is less than clear in this regard. For
example, respondent Madrid alleged that the state
agency managed to collect some support payments from
her ex-husband but failed to pass through the first $50
of each payment, to which she was purportedly entitled
under the pre-1996 version of 657(b)(1). App. 13
(Complaint -48). Although 657 may give her a federal
right to receive a specified portion of the money collected
on her behalf by Arizona, she did not explicitly request
such relief in the complaint.
In any event, it is not at all apparent that respond-
ents sought any relief more specific than a declaration
that their -rights- were being violated and an injunction
forcing Arizona's child support agency to -substantially
comply- with all of the provisions of Title IV-D. We
think that this defect is best addressed by sending the
case back for the District Court to construe the com-
plaint in the first instance, in order to determine exactly
what rights, considered in their most concrete, specific
form, respondents are asserting. Only by manageably
breaking down the complaint into specific allegations can
the District Court proceed to determine whether any
specific claim asserts an individual federal right.

B
Because we leave open the possibility that Title IV-D
may give rise to some individually enforceable rights, we
pause to consider petitioner's final argument that no
remand is warranted because the statute contains -a
remedial scheme that is `sufficiently comprehensive . . .
to demonstrate congressional intent to preclude the
remedy of suits under 1983.'- Wilder, 496 U. S., at
521 (quoting Middlesex County Sewerage Authority v.
National Sea Clammers Assn., 453 U. S. 1, 20 (1981)).
Because petitioner does not claim that any provision of
Title IV-D expressly curtails 1983 actions, she must
make the difficult showing that allowing 1983 actions
to go forward in these circumstances -would be inconsis-
tent with Congress' carefully tailored scheme.- Golden
State, 493 U. S., at 107 (citation and internal quotation
marks omitted).
Only twice have we found a remedial scheme suffi-
ciently comprehensive to supplant 1983: in Sea Clam-
mers, supra, and Smith v. Robinson, 468 U. S. 992
(1984). In Sea Clammers, we focused on the -unusually
elaborate enforcement provisions- of the Federal Water
Pollution Control Act, which placed at the disposal of
the Environmental Protection Agency a panoply of
enforcement options, including noncompliance orders,
civil suits, and criminal penalties. 453 U. S., at 13. We
emphasized that several provisions of the Act authorized
private persons to initiate enforcement actions. Id., at
14, 20. We found it -hard to believe that Congress
intended to preserve the 1983 right of action when it
created so many specific statutory remedies, including
the two citizen-suit provisions.- Id., at 20. Likewise, in
Smith, the review scheme in the Education of the
Handicapped Act permitted aggrieved individuals to
invoke -carefully tailored- local administrative proce-
dures followed by federal judicial review. 468 U. S., at
1009. We reasoned that Congress could not possibly
have wanted parents to skip these procedures and go
straight to court by way of 1983, since that would have
-render[ed] superfluous most of the detailed procedural
protections outlined in the statute.- Id., at 1011.
We have also stressed that a plaintiff's ability to
invoke 1983 cannot be defeated simply by -[t]he avail-
ability of administrative mechanisms to protect the
plaintiff's interests.- Golden State, supra, at 106. Thus,
in Wright, we rejected the argument that the Secretary
of Housing and Urban Development's -generalized
powers- to audit local public housing authorities, to
enforce annual contributions contracts, and to cut off
federal funding demonstrated a congressional intention
to prevent public housing tenants from using 1983 to
enforce their rights under the federal Housing Act. 479
U. S., at 428. We reached much the same conclusion in
Wilder, where the Secretary of Health and Human
Services had power to reject state Medicaid plans or to
withhold federal funding to States whose plans did not
comply with federal law. 496 U. S., at 521. Even
though in both cases these oversight powers were
accompanied by limited state grievance procedures for
individuals, we found that 1983 was still available.
Wright, supra, at 427-428; Wilder, supra, at 523.
The enforcement scheme that Congress created in Title
IV-D is far more limited than those in Sea Clammers
and Smith. Unlike the federal programs at issue in
those cases, Title IV-D contains no private remedy-
either judicial or administrative-through which ag-
grieved persons can seek redress. The only way that
Title IV-D assures that States live up to their child
support plans is through the Secretary's oversight. The
Secretary can audit only for -substantial compliance- on
a programmatic basis. Furthermore, up to 25 percent of
eligible children and custodial parents can go without
most of the services enumerated in Title IV-D before the
Secretary can trim a State's AFDC grant. These limited
powers to audit and cut federal funding closely resemble
those powers at issue in Wilder and Wright. Although
counsel for the Secretary suggested at oral argument
that the Secretary -has the same right under a contract
as any other party to seek specific performance,- Tr. of
Oral Arg. 49, this possibility was not developed in the
briefs. Even assuming the Secretary's authority to sue
for specific performance, Title IV-D's administrative
enforcement arsenal would not compare to those in Sea
Clammers and Smith, especially if, as the Government
further contended, see id., at 49-50, no private actor
would have standing to force the Secretary to bring suit
for specific performance. To the extent that Title IV-D
may give rise to individual rights, therefore, we agree
with the Court of Appeals that the Secretary's oversight
powers are not comprehensive enough to close the door
on 1983 liability. 68 F. 3d, at 1151-1156.

IV
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is vacated, and
the case is remanded with instructions to remand to the
District Court for further proceedings consistent with
this opinion.
It is so ordered.