Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/21-463_3ebh.pdf
Page Number: 40

Cite as:  595 U. S. ____ (2021) 

5 

SOTOMAYOR, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part 
Opinion of SOTOMAYOR, J. 

new rates for railroads and adopting high fines and penal-
ties  for  failure  to  comply  with  the  rates.    Id.,  at  128–129, 
131.  The law purported to provide no option to challenge 
the new rates other than disobeying the law and taking “the 
risk . . . of being subjected to such enormous penalties.”  Id., 
at 145.  Because the railroad officers and employees “could 
not be expected to disobey any of the provisions . . . at the 
risk of such fines and penalties,” the law effectively resulted 
in “a denial of any hearing to the company.”  Id., at 146. 
  The Court unequivocally rejected this design.  Conclud-
ing that the legislature could not “preclude a resort to the 
courts . . . for the purpose of testing [the law’s] validity,” the 
Court decided the companies could obtain pre-enforcement 
relief by suing the Minnesota attorney general based on his 
“connection  with  the  enforcement”  of  the  challenged  act.  
Id., at 146, 157.  The Court so held despite the fact that the 
attorney  general’s  only  such  connection  was  the  “general 
duty imposed upon him, which includes the right and the 
power  to  enforce  the  statutes  of  the  State,  including,  of 
course, the  act  in  question.”    Id.,  at  161.   Over  the  years, 
“the Young doctrine has been accepted as necessary to per-
mit the federal courts to vindicate federal rights and hold 
state officials responsible to ‘the supreme authority of the 
United  States.’ ”    Pennhurst  State  School  and  Hospital  v. 
Halderman,  465  U. S. 89,  105  (1984)  (quoting  Young,  209 
U. S., at 160); accord, e.g., Virginia Office for Protection and 
Advocacy v. Stewart, 563 U. S. 247, 254–255 (2011). 
  Like  the  stockholders  in  Young,  abortion providers  face 
calamitous liability from a facially unconstitutional law.  To 
be clear, the threat is not just the possibility of money judg-
ments; it is also that, win or lose, providers may be forced 
to defend themselves against countless suits, all across the 
State, without  any  prospect  of  recovery  for  their  losses  or 
expenses.  Here, as in Young, the “practical effect of [these] 
coercive penalties for noncompliance” is “to foreclose all ac-
cess  to  the  courts,”  “a  constitutionally  intolerable  choice.”