Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-603_o758.pdf
Page Number: 28.0

6 

TORRES v. TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SAFETY 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

breezes past USERRA’s language to conclude that the stat-
ute  “authoriz[es]  private  litigation  against  noncompliant
state employers that do not wish to consent to suit.”  Ante, 
at 4.2 

To be clear, I am not disputing whether USERRA speaks
clearly  enough  to  express  a  congressional  intent  to  “abro-
gate”  the  States’  sovereign  immunity  in  their  own  courts; 
plan-of-the-Convention  waiver  asks  whether  the  States
surrendered that immunity when the Constitution was rat-
ified and thus “agreed . . . not to assert that immunity” in
particular contexts.  Katz, 546 U. S., at 373.  But even if the 
Constitution itself partially strips state sovereign immun-
ity, it would still fall to Congress to decide whether, and on
what terms, to render States amenable to suit, or to permit 
States to assert immunity.  Cf. id., at 379 (“Congress may,
at its option, either treat States in the same way as other 

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not,  and  still  others  would  be  amenable  to  suit  under  the  Supremacy 
Clause  because  their  state  courts  were  authorized  to  hear  analogous 
state-law  actions  against  the  State.    See,  e.g.,  Testa  v.  Katt,  330  U. S. 
386,  394  (1947).    But  there  is  nothing  strange  about  that  lack  of  uni-
formity; in fact, a House Subcommittee considering the effect of Seminole 
Tribe of Fla. v. Florida, 517 U. S. 44 (1996), on USERRA heard testimony 
suggesting that might be how things worked if covered employees sued
in state courts.  See Hearing on USERRA et al. before the Subcommittee 
on Education, Training, Employment and Housing of the House Commit-
tee on Veterans’ Affairs, 104th Cong., 2d Sess., 90 (1996) (explaining that
“the rights of state employees to recover under the USERRA might vary
from state to state”). 

2 The Court invokes 38 U. S. C. §4302(b) to bolster its interpretation of 
§4323, see ante, at 12, but that provision supersedes only those state laws 
that abridge the “right[s]” and “benefit[s]” defined in §4303(2).  §4302(b). 
Those “rights and benefits” are “all substantive rights”; they do not “deal
with  the  procedure  or  process  for  enforcing  those  rights  and  benefits.” 
Wysocki v. International Bus. Machine Corp., 607 F. 3d 1102, 1106–1107 
(CA6 2010).  Meanwhile, §4323 clearly applies to procedure and process 
and its plain text—“in accordance with the laws of the State”—gives no 
hint that Congress meant to supersede state laws governing state sover-
eign immunity in state courts.