Landor v. Louisiana Dept of Corrections and Public Safety · ¶38

Faced with that problem, Mr. Landor and the dissent search for some foothold in our precedents to support their view that the Spending Clause grants Congress direct regulatory authority. Perhaps the best they can muster is a line snipped from Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U. S. 173 (1991), where we said that an individual employed in a federally funded program must “perform [his] duties in accordance with the . . . restrictions” specified by Congress. Id., at 198; Brief for Petitioner 32; post, at 24. But even that is of no help. Rust did not involve an attempt to impose personal liability on the program’s employees. The only consequence for violating Congress’s funding conditions fell on the federal funding recipient itself and amounted to no more than a loss of funding. See 500 U. S., at 178–179. And that is exactly the “typical remedy” for noncompliance our cases have long described. Medina,…

slip opinion, revised 6/28/26
Source edition
Passage preview. Read in context for the complete text, notes and references.