Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-1039_8n5a.pdf
Page Number: 40.0

8 

PENNEAST PIPELINE CO. v. NEW JERSEY 

BARRETT, J., dissenting 

at 17.  If private parties cannot sue nonconsenting States,
the Court says, delegatees would have no practical means 
of taking state property.3  And that is inconsistent with the 
Constitution, the Court tells us, because “[a]n eminent do-
main power that is incapable of being exercised amounts to 
no eminent domain power at all.”  Ante, at 18.  The flaw in 
this logic is glaring: The eminent domain power belongs to
the United States, not to PennEast, and the United States 
is free to take New Jersey’s property through a condemna-
tion suit or some other mechanism. 

State sovereign immunity indisputably makes it harder 
for Congress to accomplish its goals, as we have recognized
many times before.  For example, Congress cannot abrogate 
state  sovereign  immunity  to  pursue  the  “proper  Article  I 
concerns”  of  “provid[ing]  a  uniform  remedy  for  patent  in-
fringement and [placing] States on the same footing as pri-
vate parties under that regime.”  Florida Prepaid Postsec-
ondary Ed. Expense Bd. v. College Savings Bank, 527 U. S. 
627,  647–648  (1999).  Nor  can  it  authorize  private  suits
against States to “ ‘secur[e]’ a copyright holder’s ‘exclusive
Right[s]’ as against a Stat[e],” Allen, 589 U. S., at ___ (slip 
op., at 6) (quoting U. S. Const., Art. I, §8, cl. 8), or to ensure
that States negotiate in good faith with Indian tribes, Sem-
inole Tribe, 517 U. S., at 47, 72.  The same is true here: Sov-
ereign immunity limits how Congress can obtain state prop-
erty  for  pipelines.    This  inhibition  of  Congress  is  not, 

—————— 

3 The Court claims that allowing States to assert sovereign immunity 
“would leave delegatees with only one constitutionally permissible way 
of exercising the federal eminent domain power: Take property now and
require States to sue for compensation later.”  Ante, at 17.  But there are 
myriad  mechanisms  for  obtaining  land  through  eminent  domain,  and
this case gives us no occasion to consider which, if any, are available to 
delegatees.  See,  e.g.,  6A  J.  Sackman,  Nichols  on  Eminent  Domain 
§27.02[2] (3d ed. 2019) (“[I]n 1931, there were approximately 269 differ-
ent  methods  of  judicial  procedure  in  different  classes  of  condemnation
cases, and there were 56 methods of non-judicial or administrative pro-
cedure in condemnation cases”).