Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-15-02800/USCOURTS-ca7-15-02800-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 710
Nature of Suit: Fair Labor Standards Act
Cause of Action: 

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In the 

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 15‐2800

ARLENE NUÑEZ and VERONICA L. MARTINEZ,

Plaintiffs‐Appellants,

v.

INDIANA DEPARTMENT OF CHILD SERVICES,

Defendant‐Appellee.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Northern District of Indiana, Hammond Division.

No. 2:14‐cv‐00293‐JD‐JEM — Jon E. DeGuilio, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED JANUARY 22, 2016 — DECIDED APRIL 5, 2016

____________________

Before BAUER, FLAUM, and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges.

HAMILTON, Circuit Judge. The Indiana Department of Child

Services (“DCS”) oversees state child protection services,

child support enforcement, and the Indiana foster care sys‐

tem. For nine years, plaintiffs Arlene Nuñez and Veronica

Martinez worked as investigators in the DCS Gary office. On

August 20, 2014, Nuñez and Martinez sued the DCS for vio‐

lations of the overtime provisions of the federal Fair Labor

Standards Act (“FLSA”), 29 U.S.C. § 207(a). They allege that

Case: 15-2800 Document: 28 Filed: 04/05/2016 Pages: 7
2 No. 15‐2800

DCS required them to work during lunch and to remain on

call after their shifts, despite being paid for only forty hours

per week. Plaintiffs seek injunctive and declaratory relief,

damages, and attorney fees.

In Alden v. Maine, 527 U.S. 706 (1999), the Supreme Court

held that enactment of the federal FLSA did not abrogate

states’ Eleventh Amendment immunity, but the Court left

open the possibility that states could consent to such suits. Id.

at 754–55. Plaintiffs argue that Indiana has given consent, but

the district court held that it has not.

The district court’s judgment said that the complaint was

dismissed without prejudice. Dismissal of just a complaint

(not the action itself), and without prejudice at that, would

ordinarily pose a problem for our appellate jurisdiction. See,

e.g., Luevano v. Wal‐Mart Stores, Inc., 722 F.3d 1014, 1020–21

(7th Cir. 2013). By entering a separate final judgment under

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 58, however, the district court

made clear that it thought it was done with the case. Also, the

dismissal based on Eleventh Amendment immunity was not

based on a defect that could have been cured by amending the

complaint. Under these circumstances, this dismissal without

prejudice was final in practical terms and amounted to an ap‐

pealable final judgment. See Hill v. Potter, 352 F.3d 1142, 1144–

45 (7th Cir. 2003); United States v. City of Milwaukee, 144 F.3d

524, 528 n.7 (7th Cir. 1998) (collecting cases).

We review the district court’s decision de novo, Defender Se‐

curity Co. v. First Mercury Insurance Co., 803 F.3d 327, 331 (7th

Cir. 2015), and we affirm.

The Eleventh Amendment grants states immunity from

private suits in federal court without their consent. Seminole

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No. 15‐2800 3

Tribe of Florida v. Florida, 517 U.S. 44, 54 (1996); McDonough As‐

sociates, Inc. v. Grunloh, 722 F.3d 1043, 1049 (7th Cir. 2013). An

agency of the state receives this same immunity. Alabama v.

Pugh, 438 U.S. 781, 781–82 (1978) (per curiam); Kroll v. Board of

Trustees of Univ. of Illinois, 934 F.2d 904, 907 (7th Cir. 1991).

There are three exceptions to Eleventh Amendment im‐

munity. Marie O. v. Edgar, 131 F.3d 610, 615 (7th Cir. 1997). The

first—suits against state officials seeking only prospective   

equitable relief—was not raised here. See id., citing Ex parte

Young, 209 U.S. 123, 159–60 (1908). The second—where Con‐

gress has abrogated a state’s immunity through an unequivo‐

cal exercise of valid legislative power—does not apply here.

Alden, 527 U.S. at 754–55 (FLSA does not abrogate Eleventh

Amendment immunity).

Plaintiffs rely on the third exception here: a state’s waiver

of immunity and consent to suit in federal court. See College

Savings Bank v. Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Education Expense

Board, 527 U.S. 666, 675 (1999); see also Lapides v. Board of Re‐

gents of Univ. System of Georgia, 535 U.S. 613 (2002) (state’s re‐

moval of suit to federal court amounted to waiver of Eleventh

Amendment immunity in that suit).

The “test for determining whether a State has waived its

immunity from federal‐court jurisdiction is a stringent one.”

Atascadero State Hospital v. Scanlon, 473 U.S. 234, 241 (1985).

Waiver must be “stated by the most express language or by

such overwhelming implications from the text” as to leave no

doubt. Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651, 673 (1974) (internal quo‐

tation mark omitted); see also Mueller v. Thompson, 133 F.3d

1063, 1064 (7th Cir. 1998) (waiver requires that “the state has

made its intention to waive its rights under the amendment

Case: 15-2800 Document: 28 Filed: 04/05/2016 Pages: 7
4 No. 15‐2800

clear”). Constructive consent will not overcome the presump‐

tion of Eleventh Amendment immunity. Edelman, 415 U.S. at

673–74. Despite the language in Edelman allowing a finding of

implied waiver, at least if it is based on “overwhelming impli‐

cations” from statutory text, we have said more broadly that

“implicit waivers won’t do; the court must be highly confident

that the state really did intend to allow itself to be sued in fed‐

eral court.” Mueller, 133 F.3d at 1064. As shown below, we

need not resolve this tension between these opinions because

the statutory text provides no “overwhelming implications”

of waiver.

Nuñez and Martinez argue first that we can find an ex‐

press waiver in the text of the Indiana Code. They rely on lan‐

guage in the Indiana statute providing a statute of limitations

for contract claims against the state. The statute provides:

“Any person having a claim against the state arising out of an

express or implied contract may bring suit within ten (10)

years after accrual of the claim.” Ind. Code § 34‐13‐1‐1(a). The

express language of this provision does not waive Eleventh

Amendment immunity for any general category of claims or

for FLSA claims in particular.

The Supreme Court has rejected a finding of waiver of

Eleventh Amendment immunity based on such a general

statement allowing suit against the state, even when the state‐

ment was coupled with an express agreement to obey a spe‐

cific federal law. Florida Dep’t of Health and Rehabilitative Ser‐

vices v. Florida Nursing Home Ass’n, 450 U.S. 147, 149–50 (1981)

(per curiam) (statute allowing a state to “be sued” and prom‐

ising to “abide by ... the Title XIX Medicaid Program” did not

waive the state’s immunity for suit alleging insufficient Med‐

Case: 15-2800 Document: 28 Filed: 04/05/2016 Pages: 7
No. 15‐2800 5

icaid reimbursements). Nor are there “overwhelming impli‐

cations” from the statutory text or related provisions showing

that this statute of limitations was also meant to waive im‐

munity from FLSA suits. Instead, § 34‐13‐1‐1(a) functions pri‐

marily as a statute of limitations for contract disputes with the

state. See Januchowski v. Northern Indiana Commuter Transp.

Dist., 905 N.E.2d 1041, 1048–49 (Ind. App. 2009).  

The plaintiffs also compare § 34‐13‐1‐1(a) to § 34‐13‐3‐5(f),

which states that the Indiana Tort Claims Act “shall not be

construed as ... a waiver of the eleventh amendment.” Since

the state took the trouble to withhold consent explicitly for

tort claims, plaintiffs argue, its failure to do the same for con‐

tract claims signals consent to federal court jurisdiction over

them. This statutory interpretation argument might have

some force in other contexts, but it runs contrary to the strong

presumption against waiver of Eleventh Amendment im‐

munity. Under plaintiff’s logic, one express disclaimer of

waiver for one category of cases would be transformed by

canons of statutory interpretation into a sweeping implied

waiver of immunity for every other category of cases. Under

the strong presumption against waiver, however, Indiana’s

extra caution shown by an express disclaimer of a waiver for

tort and civil rights suits cannot undermine the presumption

against waiver for every other sort of claim against the state.

Any Eleventh Amendment waiver must be clear, not faintly

implied from silence using canons of statutory construction.

Nuñez and Martinez also suggest a more circuitous route

from § 34‐13‐1‐1(a) to consent to suit under the FLSA. They

rely upon this logical chain: (1) Indiana allows suits to be

brought against the state for violations of express and implied

contracts, (2) an employment relationship is a contract for

Case: 15-2800 Document: 28 Filed: 04/05/2016 Pages: 7
6 No. 15‐2800

purposes of Indiana law, and (3) the FLSA’s requirements are

embedded in all employment relationships and thus in con‐

tracts. Ergo, conclude plaintiffs, Indiana has consented to fed‐

eral FLSA suits by its employees. This path around the Elev‐

enth Amendment amounts to a creative argument for the sort

of implied waiver that, as the Supreme Court has said, is not

sufficient. See, e.g., College Savings Bank, 527 U.S. at 678, citing

Edelman, 415 U.S. at 673.

The district court illustrated the barrier to this argument

by correctly comparing this case to Mueller v. Thompson, 133

F.3d 1063 (7th Cir. 1998), where we rejected a stronger argu‐

ment for a state’s waiver of Eleventh Amendment immunity

for FLSA claims. In Mueller, a Wisconsin statute authorized

suits against the state as an employer for overtime pay. The

statute also expressly incorporated the FLSA in defining what

constituted overtime work. We nevertheless rejected the claim

that this “chain of provisions effects a waiver of the State’s

Eleventh Amendment immunity from suit in federal court

under the FLSA.” Id. at 1064. As in Mueller, the state statute

here refers only to state law. The fact that a state incorporates

the standards of the federal FLSA into employment contracts

“does not transform state into federal law, any more than by

copying the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure a state turns its

procedural code into federal law.” Id.  

Plaintiffs attempt to distinguish Mueller by arguing that

the Wisconsin statute had been enacted in 1971, just five years

after Congress amended the FLSA to extend it to most state

and local government employees, and when the constitution‐

ality of applying the FLSA to state employees was still unset‐

tled. See generally Maryland v. Wirtz, 392 U.S. 183 (1968), over‐

ruled by National League of Cities v. Usery, 426 U.S. 833 (1976),

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No. 15‐2800 7

in turn overruled by Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit

Auth., 469 U.S. 528 (1985). When Indiana enacted the current

codification of § 34‐13‐1‐1 in 1998, plaintiffs argue, application

of the FLSA to state employees was settled law, so we should

infer that Indiana legislators made a deliberate choice not to

preserve sovereign immunity expressly in statutory text.

This argument runs into three problems, each of which

would be sufficient to reject it. First, application of the FLSA

to state employees was not settled in 1998, as shown by the

Supreme Court’s decision in Alden v. Maine, 527 U.S. 706

(1999), which held under the Eleventh Amendment that Con‐

gress could not subject states to FLSAsuits even in state courts

without the states’ consent. Second, the argument again relies

on an erroneous presumption in favor of waiver. States must

explicitly waive sovereign immunity, not explicitly preserve

it. Finally, the argument reads far too much into the 1998 re‐

codification of Title 34 of the Indiana Code dealing with civil

procedure. Public Law 1‐1998 was intended to recodify exist‐

ing law, not to change substantive law, and certainly not to do

anything as substantive as implicitly waive the state’s Elev‐

enth Amendment immunity. See Ind. Code § 34‐7‐1‐4 (in‐

structions on how to construe recodification act of 1998);

Cheri A. Harris, Cleaning House in Title 34: Recodification of the

Civil Code of 1881, Res Gestae, April 1998, at 26 (“An effort is

made to resolve ambiguities in current law whenever possi‐

ble, but with the condition that no substantive changes are to

be made in the law.”). The recodification of the older statute

of limitations did not indicate any deliberate choice by the

state to waive the protections of the Eleventh Amendment.

The judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.

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