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Page Number: 15.0

10 

BIDEN v. NEBRASKA 

Opinion of the Court 

saw it, was not a harm to Arkansas sufficient for the State 
to sue in its own name. 

We  disagreed.  We  recognized  that  “Arkansas  must,  of 
course, represent an interest of her own and not merely that 
of  her  citizens  or  corporations.”    Ibid.    But  we  concluded 
that Arkansas was in fact seeking to protect its own inter-
ests  because  the  University  was  “an  official  state  instru-
mentality.”  Ibid.  The State had labeled the University “an 
instrument of the state in the performance of a governmen-
tal  work.”  Ibid.  (internal  quotation  marks  omitted).    The 
University  served  a  public  purpose,  acting  as  the  State’s 
“agen[t] in the educational field.”  Id., at 371.  The Univer-
sity  had  been  “created  by  the  Arkansas  legislature,”  was 
“governed by a Board of Trustees appointed by the Gover-
nor  with  consent  of  the  Senate,”  and  “report[ed]  all  of  its
expenditures to the legislature.”  Id., at 370.  In short, the 
University  was  an  instrumentality  of  the  State,  and  “any 
injury under the contract to the University [was] an injury
to Arkansas.”  Ibid.  So too here.  Because the Authority is
part of Missouri, the State does not seek to “rely on injuries
suffered  by  others.”  Post,  at  2  (opinion  of  KAGAN,  J.).  It 
aims to remedy its own.

The Secretary and the dissent assert that MOHELA’s in-
juries should not count as Missouri’s because MOHELA, as
a public corporation, has a legal personality separate from
the  State.  Every  government  corporation  has  such  a  dis-
tinct personality; it is a corporation, after all, “with the pow-
ers to hold and sell property and to sue and be sued.”  First 
Nat. City Bank v. Banco Para el Comercio Exterior de Cuba, 
462 U. S. 611, 624 (1983).  Yet such an instrumentality—
created and operated to fulfill a public function—nonethe-
less remains “(for many purposes at least) part of the Gov-
ernment  itself.”  Lebron  v.  National  Railroad  Passenger 
Corporation, 513 U. S. 374, 397 (1995).

In Lebron, Amtrak was sued for refusing to display a po-
litical  advertisement  on  a  billboard  at  one  of  its  stations.