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A. 1. a.(1)(a) i) a) I A 1 a (1)(a) i) a)@@BQck QuoteSingle spaced indented quote - Circv C   (  Cd  ( ( ( FTNFormats for each footnote,  X` hp x (#%'0*,.8135@8: question benefit the plaintiff. Wright, 479 U.S., at 430. > J"   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  J 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  J than precatory terms. Wilder, supra, at 510!511; see  J 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  JX 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  J under 1983. Livadas v. Bradshaw, 512 U.S. 107, 133 (1994).  ;H2 d d8A؃  |2  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.  J 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 sweeping 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 manageable 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  Jh 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,  Jx welldefined 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` "    J 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  J` 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  JH where removal had occurred. Id., at at 352 (footnote  J 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 collectivebargaining process and agree to  J 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  J an individual entitlement to services, the standard is simply a yardstick for the Secretary to measure the  J 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 substantially 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 considerably 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` "  Ԍsystem. 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 extraordinary 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 regulations, 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  J 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). Enforcement of such an undefined standard would certainly  J  strain judicial competence. Livadas v. Bradshaw, 512 U.S., at 132.  We do not foreclose the possibility that some provisions 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 exhusband but failed to pass through the first $50 of each payment, to which she was purportedly entitled under the pre1996 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 respondents 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 complaint 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.  ;H2 d d8B؃  d2  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  J remedy of suits under 1983.' !  Wilder, 496 U.S., at  J 521 (quoting Middlesex County Sewerage Authority v.  J` 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 J tent with Congress' carefully tailored scheme. Golden  Jp State, 493 U.S., at 107 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted).  Only twice have we found a remedial scheme suffi J ciently comprehensive to supplant 1983: in Sea Clam J mers, supra, and Smith v. Robinson, 468 U.S. 992  J (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  J 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  J the two citizensuit provisions. Id., at 20. Likewise, in  J Smith, the review scheme in the Education of the Handicapped Act permitted aggrieved individuals to invoke carefully tailored local administrative procedures 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  J 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 availability of administrative mechanisms to protect the  J plaintiff's interests. Golden State, supra, at 106. Thus,  J 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  JH 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.  J0 Wright, supra, at 427!428; Wilder, supra, at 523.  The enforcement scheme that Congress created in Title  J IV!D is far more limited than those in Sea Clammers  J and Smith. Unlike the federal programs at issue in those cases, Title IV!D contains no private remedy" either judicial or administrative"through which aggrieved 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  J 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  J enforcement arsenal would not compare to those in Sea  J` Clammers and Smith, especially if, as the Government  J8 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.  9H1 d d7IV؃  \ 2  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.  J ` BIt is so ordered.ă