Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/21-463_3ebh.pdf
Page Number: 10.0

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

5 

Opinion of the Court 

begin  with  the  sovereign  immunity  appeal  involving  the 
state-court judge, Austin Jackson, and the state-court clerk, 
Penny Clarkston.  While this lawsuit names only one state-
court judge and one state-court clerk as defendants, the pe-
titioners explain that they hope eventually to win certifica-
tion  of  a  class  including  all  Texas  state-court  judges  and 
clerks as defendants.  In the end, the petitioners say, they 
intend to seek an order enjoining all state-court clerks from 
docketing S. B. 8 cases and all state-court judges from hear-
ing them. 
  Almost  immediately,  however,  the  petitioners’  theory 
confronts a difficulty.  Generally, States are immune from 
suit under the terms of the Eleventh Amendment and the 
doctrine of sovereign immunity.  See, e.g., Alden v. Maine, 
527 U. S. 706, 713 (1999).  To be sure, in Ex parte Young, 
this Court recognized a narrow exception grounded in tra-
ditional  equity  practice—one  that  allows  certain  private 
parties  to  seek  judicial  orders  in  federal  court  preventing 
state executive officials from enforcing state laws that are 
contrary to federal law.  209 U. S. 123, 159–160 (1908).  But 
as Ex parte Young explained, this traditional exception does 
not  normally  permit  federal  courts  to  issue  injunctions 
against state-court judges or clerks.  Usually, those individ-
uals do not enforce state laws as executive officials might; 
instead, they work to resolve disputes between parties.  If a 
state  court  errs  in  its  rulings,  too,  the  traditional  remedy 
has been some form of appeal, including to this Court, not 
the entry of an ex ante injunction preventing the state court 
from hearing cases.  As Ex parte Young put it, “an injunc-
tion  against  a state court”  or  its  “machinery”  “would  be  a 
violation of the whole scheme of our Government.”  Id., at 
163. 
  Nor is that the only problem confronting the petitioners’ 
court-and-clerk  theory.    Article  III  of  the  Constitution  af-
fords federal courts the power to resolve only “actual con-
troversies  arising  between  adverse  litigants.”    Muskrat  v.