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Page Number: 38

16 

TORRES v. TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SAFETY 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

debtors and rely on the Treaty to defeat any state law de-
fenses.”  B. Clark, The Eleventh Amendment and the Na-
ture of the Union, 123 Harv. L. Rev. 1817, 1910 (2010).  And 
when the Eleventh Amendment was adopted “to restore the
original constitutional design” after Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 
Dall. 419 (1793), Alden, 527 U. S., at 722, Congress refused 
“to make an exception for cases arising under treaties made 
under the authority of the United States,” id., at 721 (inter-
nal quotation marks omitted).  “Congress’ refusal to modify
the text of the Eleventh Amendment to create an exception
to sovereign immunity for cases arising under treaties” sug-
gests  that  the  States’  immunity  from  private-party  litiga-
tion extended even to treaty-based claims.  Id., at 735; see 
also D. Currie, The Constitution in Congress: The Federal-
ist Period 1789–1801, p. 197 (1997).

Early  congressional  practice  accords  with  the  Framers’ 
assumption that Congress could not use any Article I power
to  subject  the  States  to  private  damages  actions  in  their 
own  courts.  In  fact,  we  already  have  “discovered  no  in-
stance in which [early Congresses] purported to authorize 
suits  against  nonconsenting  States  in  [state  courts].” 
Alden, 527 U. S., at 744.  Contrasted against the numerous 
statutes  authorizing  other  federal  suits  in  state  courts,  it
“appears  early  Congresses  did  not  believe  they  had  the
power to authorize private suits against the States in their
own courts.”  Ibid. 

C 
Constitutional  structure  also  cuts  decisively  against  in-
ferring a surrender of state sovereign immunity in this con-
text.  See id., at 748–754. 

First  and  most  fundamentally,  all  private  suits  against 
nonconsenting States present “ ‘the indignity of subjecting
a State  to the coercive  process of judicial tribunals at the 
instance  of  private  parties.’ ”    Id.,  at  749  (quoting  In re 
Ayers, 123 U. S. 443, 505 (1887)).  USERRA’s cause of action