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Page Number: 8.0

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TORRES v. TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SAFETY 

Opinion of the Court 

“[t]o raise and support Armies” and “[t]o provide and main-
tain a Navy.”  U. S. Const., Art. I, §8, cls. 12–13.  The ques-
tion before us is whether the Constitution allows Congress 
to  enforce  these  federal  reemployment  protections  by  au-
thorizing private litigation against noncompliant state em-
ployers that do not wish to consent to suit. 

A 
The Constitution forged a Union, but it also protected the
sovereign  prerogatives  of  States  within  our  government. 
Generally speaking, “the States entered the federal system
with their sovereignty,” including their sovereign immun-
ity,  “intact.”    Blatchford  v.  Native  Village  of  Noatak,  501 
U. S. 775, 779 (1991).  Basic tenets of sovereign immunity 
teach that courts may not ordinarily hear a suit brought by
any person against a nonconsenting State.  See ibid. 

But States still remain subject to suit in certain circum-
stances.  States may, of course, consent to suit.  See Sossa-
mon v. Texas, 563 U. S. 277, 284 (2011).  Congress may also
enact  laws  abrogating  their  immunity  under  the  Four-
teenth  Amendment.  See  Fitzpatrick  v.  Bitzer,  427  U. S. 
445, 456 (1976).  And, as relevant here, States may be sued 
if they agreed their sovereignty would yield as part of the
“plan of the Convention,” PennEast, 594 U. S., at ___ (slip 
op., at 15)—that is, if “the structure of the original Consti-
tution itself ” reflects a waiver of States’ sovereign immun-
ity, Alden, 527 U. S., at 728.  “[A]ctions do not offend state 
sovereignty” if “the States consented” to them “at the found-
ing.”  PennEast, 594 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 23). 

Alexander  Hamilton  described  three  circumstances 
where the “plan of the Convention” implied that the States 
waived their sovereign immunity: “where the Constitution
in express terms granted an exclusive authority to the Un-
ion;  where  it  granted  in  one  instance  an  authority  to  the
Union and in another prohibited the States from exercising 
the like authority; and where it granted an authority to the