Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 440

524US2

Unit: $U91

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Cite as: 524 U. S. 381 (1998)

395

Kennedy, J., concurring

inconsistent with viewing the Eleventh Amendment as a re-
striction on the federal courts’ subject matter jurisdiction”).
The Court could eliminate the unfairness by modifying
our Eleventh Amendment jurisprudence to make it more con-
sistent with our practice regarding personal jurisdiction.
Under a rule inferring waiver from the failure to raise the
objection at the outset of the proceedings, States would be
prevented from gaining an unfair advantage. See Fed. Rule
Civ. Proc. 12(h)(1).

We would not need to make this substantial revision to
ﬁnd waiver in the circumstances here, however. Even if ap-
pearing in federal court and defending on the merits is not
sufﬁcient to constitute a waiver, a different case may be pre-
sented when a State under no compulsion to appear in fed-
eral court voluntarily invokes its jurisdiction. As the Court
recognized in Gunter v. Atlantic Coast Line R. Co., 200 U. S.
273, 284 (1906), “where a State voluntarily becomes a party
to a cause and submits its rights for judicial determination,
it will be bound thereby and cannot escape the result of its
own voluntary act by invoking the prohibitions of the Elev-
enth Amendment.”

An early decision of this Court applied this principle in
holding that a State’s voluntary intervention in a federal-
court action to assert its own claim constituted a waiver of
the Eleventh Amendment. Clark v. Barnard, 108 U. S. 436,
447–448 (1883); see also Employees of Dept. of Public Health
and Welfare of Mo. v. Department of Public Health and Wel-
fare of Mo., 411 U. S. 279, 294, n. 10 (1973) (Marshall, J., con-
curring in result) (citing Clark v. Barnard with approval);
Petty v. Tennessee-Missouri Bridge Comm’n, 359 U. S. 275,
276 (1959) (same); Missouri v. Fiske, 290 U. S. 18, 24–25
(1933) (same). The Court also found a waiver of the Elev-
enth Amendment when a State voluntarily appeared in bank-
ruptcy court to ﬁle a claim against a common fund. Gardner
v. New Jersey, 329 U. S. 565, 574 (1947). Since a State which
is made a defendant to a state-court action is under no com-