Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-1039_8n5a.pdf
Page Number: 24

Cite as:  594 U. S. ____ (2021) 

19 

Opinion of the Court 

the  Federal  Government  has  such  an  ability—including
against state-owned property—and that the exercise of the
federal  eminent  domain  power  was  a  means  that  was
“known  and  appropriate”  at  the  time  of  the  founding.    91 
U. S., at 372.  We made very clear that this conclusion was
unaffected  by  the  fact  that  the  federal  eminent  domain 
power had “not heretofore been exercised adversely” within
the States, because “the non-user of a power does not dis-
prove its existence.”  Id., at 373. 

The  respondents  and  the  dissent  recognize,  moreover,
that States consented in the plan of the Convention to suits 
by the Federal Government, even though that proposition 
was  not  established  until  1892  in  United  States  v.  Texas. 
See post, at 6–7; Brief  for Respondent NCJF 37; Brief for 
Respondent New Jersey et al. 20–21; see also Principality 
of Monaco v. Mississippi, 292 U. S. 313, 329 (1934); Blatch-
ford, 501 U. S., at 781–782.  The Court in Texas—which was 
decided even more recently than Kohl, Stockton, and Cher-
okee Nation—did not insist upon examples from the found-
ing era of federal suits against States.  The Court instead 
reasoned  as  a  structural  matter  that  such  suits  were  au-
thorized because it “does no violence to the inherent nature 
of sovereignty”  for a  State to be sued by “the government
established for the common and equal benefit of the people
of all the States.”  143 U. S., at 646.  The structural consid-
erations  discussed  above  likewise  show  that  States  con-
sented to the federal eminent domain power, whether that
power  is  exercised  by  the  Government  or  its  delegatees. 
And that is true even in the absence of a perfect historical 
analogue to the proceedings PennEast initiated below.

The dissent argues that the Court in Texas relied not only
on  “constitutional  structure,”  but  also  on  “textual  cues.” 
Post, at 6.  But the only relevant constitutional text in Texas 
was a grant of federal jurisdiction, and that cannot explain
States’  implicit  consent  in  the  plan  of  the  Convention  to