Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-603_o758.pdf
Page Number: 7.0

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

3 

Opinion of the Court 

Torres received an honorable discharge.  But he returned 
home  with  constrictive  bronchitis,  a  respiratory  condition 
that  narrowed  his  airways  and  made  breathing  difficult.
These ailments, Torres alleges, changed his life and left him 
unable  to  work  at  his  old  job  as  a  state  trooper.  Torres 
asked his former employer, respondent Texas Department 
of Public Safety (Texas), to accommodate his condition by 
reemploying him in a different role.  Texas refused to do so. 
Torres sued Texas in state court.  He argued that Texas
had violated USERRA’s mandate that state employers re-
hire returning servicemembers, use “reasonable efforts” to
accommodate  any  service-related  disability,  or  find  an 
“equivalent” position (or its “nearest approximation”) where 
such disability prevents the veteran from holding his prior 
position.  38 U. S. C. §4313(a)(3).  Texas moved to dismiss 
the  suit  by invoking  sovereign  immunity.    The  trial  court 
denied the motion.  A divided intermediate appellate court
reversed,  stating  this  Court’s  precedents  established  that 
Congress could not authorize private suits against noncon-
senting States pursuant to its Article I powers except under
the Bankruptcy Clause and citing Central Va. Community 
College v. Katz, 546 U. S. 356 (2006).  See 583 S. W. 3d 221, 
225–230 (Tex. App. 2018).  The Supreme Court of Texas de-
nied discretionary review.

After  the  decision  below,  this  Court  decided  PennEast, 
594  U. S.  ___.    There,  we  recognized  that  the  States  had
waived their sovereign immunity as to the exercise of the 
federal  eminent  domain  power  under  the  structure  of  the
Constitution pursuant to the “plan of the Convention.”  See 
id., at ___ (slip op., at 14).  We then granted Torres’ petition
for certiorari to decide whether, in light of that intervening 
decision, USERRA’s damages remedy against state employ-
ers is constitutional. 

Congress  enacted  USERRA  as  an  exercise  of  its  power 

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