Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-603_o758.pdf
Page Number: 51.0

Cite as:  597 U. S. ____ (2022) 

29 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

render them liable.”  Id., at 19–20. 
  We repudiated Parden and overruled Union Gas in Sem-
inole Tribe.  See 517 U. S., at 66; see also College Savings 
Bank  v.  Florida  Prepaid  Postsecondary  Ed.  Expense  Bd., 
527 U. S. 666, 683 (1999) (Seminole Tribe “expressly repu-
theory  of  plan-of-the-Convention
diate[d]”  Parden’s 
waiver).  Therefore, if Seminole  Tribe  was right, then the 
Court’s decision today is wrong.  Hopefully, the Court will
someday purge the newly fashioned “completeness” stand-
ard from our jurisprudence. 

* 

* 

* 
“Congress  has  ample  means  to  ensure  compliance  with
valid federal laws, but it must respect the sovereignty of the 
States.”  Alden, 527 U. S., at 758.  If the Court’s reading of
USERRA is correct—and I am unsure it is, see supra, at 5– 
7—then Congress has not “accord[ed] States the esteem due
to them as joint participants in a federal system.”  527 U. S., 
at 758.  To nonetheless deem USERRA constitutional, the 
Court brushes aside a 23-year-old, pathbreaking precedent,
while elevating a single phrase, made in passing in a one-
year-old, highly circumscribed precedent.  It then uses that 
phrase to fashion a test for plan-of-the-Convention waiver 
that mimics earlier attempts by this Court to deny States 
the dignity owed to them in our system of dual federalism.
Our sovereign States deserved better.  I respectfully dis-

sent.