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Page Number: 36.0

14 

TORRES v. TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SAFETY 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

To  nonetheless  find  plan-of-the-Convention  waiver,  as
Torres proposes and the Court accepts, is to hold that a con-
gressional power to pre-empt state law alone demonstrates 
a State’s surrender of sovereign immunity.  That line of rea-
soning,  apart  from  being  foreclosed  by  Seminole  Tribe, 
proves too much.  The upshot is that the States would have 
consented in the plan of the Convention to surrender their
immunity against the exercise of any Article I power.  Be-
cause such a result is a dramatic departure from our prece-
dents, and the power granted to Congress under the Army
and  Navy  Clauses  does  not  displace  state  regulation  any 
more  readily  or  completely  than  other  Article  I  powers, 
these arguments from constitutional text provide no sound
basis for authorizing private actions against nonconsenting 
States. 

B 

Constitutional  history  and  practice  do  Torres  and  the 
Court no better.  To begin, we must view the historical evi-
dence in light of the “presumption that no anomalous and 
unheard-of proceedings or suits were intended to be raised
up  by  the  Constitution.”  Hans,  134  U. S.,  at  18;  see  also 
Alden, 527 U. S., at 727.  Applying that presumption, the 
Court in the past has “attribute[d] great significance” to the 
absence of analogous suits “at the time of the founding or 
for many years thereafter.”  Federal Maritime Comm’n, 535 
U. S., at 755.6  Moreover, the presumption is arguably at its 

—————— 

6 It is true that the Court in PennEast Pipeline Co. v. New Jersey, 594 
U. S.  ___  (2021),  found  plan-of-the-Convention  waiver  even  in  “the  ab-
sence of a perfect historical analogue” to private condemnation suits by
federal  delegatees  against  States.  Id.,  at  ___  (slip  op.,  at  19).  But 
PennEast excused this absence of historically analogous actions because
it refused to “divorce the eminent domain power from the power to bring 
condemnation actions,” given that “the eminent domain power is inextri-
cably intertwined with the ability to condemn,” and “the federal eminent 
domain power was a means that was ‘known and appropriate’ at the time
of the founding.”  Id., at ___–___, ___ (slip op., at 16–17, 19).  Thus, the