Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-877_dc8f.pdf
Page Number: 10.0

Cite as:  589 U. S. ____ (2020) 

7 

Opinion of the Court 

sovereign  immunity  “place[s]  upon  federal  jurisdiction.”
517 U. S., at 73.  That proscription ended the matter.  Be-
cause Congress could not “abrogate state sovereign immun-
ity [under] Article I,” Florida Prepaid explained, the Intel-
lectual  Property  Clause  could  not  support  the  Patent 
Remedy Act.  527 U. S., at 636.  And to extend the point to 
this  case:  if  not  the  Patent  Remedy  Act,  not  its  copyright
equivalent either, and for the same reason.  Here too, the 
power to “secur[e ]” an intellectual property owner’s “exclu-
sive Right” under Article I stops when it runs into sovereign
immunity.  §8, cl. 8.

Allen  claims,  however,  that  a  later  case  offers  an  exit 
ramp  from  Florida  Prepaid.  In  Central  Va.  Community 
College v. Katz, 546 U. S. 356, 359 (2006), we held that Ar-
ticle  I’s  Bankruptcy  Clause  enables  Congress  to  subject 
nonconsenting States to bankruptcy proceedings (there, to 
recover  a  preferential  transfer).    We  thus  exempted  the
Bankruptcy Clause from Seminole Tribe’s general rule that
Article I cannot justify haling a State into federal court.  In 
bankruptcy, we decided, sovereign immunity has no place.
But if that is true, Allen asks, why not say the same thing
here?  Allen  reads  Katz  as  “adopt[ing]  a  clause-by-clause
approach to evaluating whether a particular clause of Arti-
cle I” allows the abrogation of sovereign immunity.  Brief 
for Petitioners 20.  And he claims that the Intellectual Prop-
erty  Clause  “supplies  singular  warrant”  for  Congress  to 
take that step.  Ibid.  That is so, Allen reiterates, because 
“Congress  could  not  ‘secur[e]’  authors’  ‘exclusive  Right’  to 
their works if [it] were powerless” to make States pay for 
infringing conduct.  Ibid. 

But everything in Katz is about and limited to the Bank-
ruptcy  Clause;  the  opinion  reflects  what  might  be  called
bankruptcy  exceptionalism.  In  part,  Katz  rested  on  the 
“singular nature” of bankruptcy jurisdiction.  546 U. S., at 
369,  n. 9.    That  jurisdiction  is,  and  was  at  the  Founding,
“principally  in rem”—meaning  that  it  is  “premised  on  the