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Page Number: 57.0

10 

BIDEN v. NEBRASKA 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

the contract to the University is an injury to Arkansas”: The 
State  was  the  principal  beneficiary  of  the  contract  to  im-
prove its own property.  Ibid.  So Arkansas had the sort of 
direct  financial  interest  not  present  here.  And  there  is 
more: The University, the Court thought, could not sue on
its own.  See ibid.  The majority suggests otherwise, citing
a  state-court  decision  holding  that  corporations  usually
have the power to bring and defend legal actions.  See ante, 
at  11–12.  But  the  Arkansas  Court  referenced  a  different 
state-court decision—one holding that another state school
was “not authorized” to “sue and be sued.”  Allen Eng. Co. 
v. Kays, 106 Ark. 174, 177, 152 S. W. 992, 993 (1913); see 
Arkansas, 346 U. S., at 370, and n. 9.  That decision led this 
Court to conclude that Arkansas law treated “a suit against 
the University” as “a suit against  the State.”  Id., at 370. 
But if state law had not done so—as it does not in Missouri 
for  MOHELA?    See  supra,  at  6–7.  The  Court  made  clear 
that a State cannot stand in for an independent entity.  The 
State, the Court said, “must, of course, represent an inter-
est of her own and not merely that of her citizens or corpo-
rations.”  Ibid. 

The majority’s second case—Lebron v. National Railroad 
Passenger Corporation, 513 U. S. 374 (1995)—is yet further 
afield.  The issue there was whether Amtrak, a public cor-
poration similar to MOHELA, had to comply with the First
Amendment.  The Court held that it did, labeling Amtrak a 
state actor for that purpose.  On the opposite view, we rea-
soned, a government could “evade the most solemn obliga-
tions imposed in the Constitution by simply resorting to the 
corporate  form.”  Id.,  at  397;  see  ibid.  (noting  that  Plessy
could then be “resurrected by the simple device” of creating
a public corporation to run trains).  But that did not mean 
Amtrak was equivalent to the Government for all purposes. 
Over and over, we cabined our holding that Amtrak was a 
state actor by adding a phrase like “for purposes of the First
Amendment” or other constitutional rights.  Id., at 400; see