Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-603_o758.pdf
Page Number: 41

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

19 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

And even if private suits were necessary to enforce the fed-
eral scheme, individuals could still sue in equity to enjoin 
state  officials  from  violating  federal  law,  see  Ex parte 
Young, 209 U. S. 123 (1908), or, if Congress authorizes it,
pursue damages actions against such state officials in their 
individual capacities, see, e.g., Rev. Stat. §1979, 42 U. S. C. 
§1983.  Ultimately, if the Court reaffirmed Texas’ sovereign
immunity, “[e]stablished rules provide ample means to cor-
rect ongoing violations of law and to vindicate the interests
which animate the Supremacy Clause.”  Alden, 527 U. S., 
at 757. 

D 
Finally, our precedents do not support finding a surren-
der of state sovereign immunity here.  As explained above, 
Alden is the most on-point precedent—and, in fact, our only 
recent precedent discussing States’ immunity from suit in
their own courts.  It therefore disposes of this case.  Neither 
Katz nor PennEast supports a different result. 

Katz  found  plan-of-the-Convention  waiver  based  on  the 
“singular nature” of bankruptcy jurisdiction and “the Bank-
ruptcy Clause’s unique history.”  546 U. S., at 369, n. 9.  As 
the Court later explained, Katz “viewed bankruptcy as on a
different  plane,  governed  by  principles  all  its  own,”  and 
nothing in its analysis “invites the kind of general, clause-
by-clause  reexamination  of  Article  I”  that  the  Court  en-
dorses today.  Allen v. Cooper, 589 U. S. ___, ___ (2020) (slip 
op., at 9) (internal quotation marks omitted).

For its part, PennEast emphasized several factors unique
to the eminent domain context.  First, PennEast discussed 
the  Federal  Government’s  long  history  of  exercising  the 
power of eminent domain—including its delegation of that 
power  to  private  parties  to  take  property  within  state
boundaries.  See 594 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 7).  Here, there 
is a long history showing that the Federal Government ex-
ercised its war powers, but there is no comparable history