Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-603_o758.pdf
Page Number: 39

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

17 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

is uniquely offensive to the States’ dignity because it pur-
ports “to press a State’s own courts into federal service to
coerce the other branches of the State,” thereby “turn[ing]
the State against itself ” and “commandeer[ing] the entire
political machinery of the State against its will and at the 
behest of individuals.”  Alden, 527 U. S., at 749.  That kind 
of “plenary federal control of state governmental processes 
denigrates the separate sovereignty of the States.”  Ibid. 

Second,  congressional  authorization  of  private  damages
actions  “threaten[s]  the  financial  integrity  of  the  States.” 
Id.,  at  750.    It  can  “create  staggering  burdens”  and  give 
“Congress a power and a leverage over the States that is not 
contemplated by our constitutional design.”  Ibid.
  Third,  representative  government  itself  is  jeopardized
when  “deliberation  by  the  political  process  established  by 
the  citizens  of  the  State”  is  replaced  with  “judicial  decree 
mandated by the Federal Government and invoked by the
private citizen.”  Id., at 751.  Political accountability—“es-
sential to our liberty and republican form of government”—
breaks  down  when  “the  Federal  Government  asserts  au-
thority  over  a  State’s  most  fundamental  political  pro-
cesses.”  Ibid.7 

Notwithstanding  these  countervailing  structural  con-
cerns, both Torres and the Court think that constitutional 
structure  supports  finding  plan-of-the-Convention  waiver 
because  confirming  States’  sovereign  immunity  in  their 
own courts would supposedly threaten the Federal Govern-
ment’s “power to wage war successfully” and jeopardize the 
Nation’s  safety.  Ante,  at  11  (quoting  Lichter  v.  United 
States, 334 U. S. 742, 780 (1948); internal quotation marks 

—————— 

7 These unique structural dangers posed by granting the Federal Gov-
ernment authority to turn the State against itself again show why the
Court errs in concluding that precedents concerning plan-of-the-Conven-
tion waivers applicable to suits in federal court necessarily support waiv-
ers of immunity from suit in state court.  See ante, at 15; see also supra,
at 10, n. 4.