Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-1039_8n5a.pdf
Page Number: 32

4 

PENNEAST PIPELINE CO. v. NEW JERSEY 

GORSUCH, J., dissenting 

which  relief  is  sought  by  the  suit.”).  Because  the  parties
agree  that  PennEast  is  a  citizen  of  Delaware,  this  suit  is 
brought “by [a] Citizen[ ] of another State.”  See Tr. of Oral 
Arg. 25–27; see also State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. v. Ta-
shire, 386 U. S. 523, 531 (1967). 

If that’s all true, then a federal court “shall not” entertain 
this suit.  The Eleventh Amendment’s text, no less than the 
Constitution’s  structure,  may  bar  it.    This  Court,  under-
standably, does not address that issue today2 because the 
parties have not addressed it themselves and “there is no 
mandatory ‘sequencing of jurisdictional issues.’ ”  Sinochem 
Int’l Co. v. Malaysia Int’l Shipping Corp., 549 U. S. 422, 431 
(2007).  The  lower  courts,  however,  have  an  obligation  to
consider this issue on remand before proceeding to the mer-
its.  See  Steel  Co.  v.  Citizens  for  Better  Environment,  523 
U. S. 83, 94–95, 101 (1998). 

—————— 

2 What the Court does say, in a drive-by rumination on the waivability
of “the Eleventh Amendment,” pertains to structural immunity.  Ante, at 
20.   All  of  the  cases  it  cites  fall  outside  of  the  Eleventh  Amendment’s 
text.   The  Court’s  language,  then,  conflating  structural  immunity  and 
Eleventh Amendment immunity furnishes just the latest example of the 
“misnomer” this Court already put to bed in Alden.  Supra, at 1.