Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/98-149.ZS.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 01:53:58+00:00

Document:
An individual may sue a State where Congress has authorized such a suit in the exercise of its power to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment, Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, 427 U.S. 445, or where a State has waived its sovereign immunity by consenting to suit, Clark v. Barnard, 108 U.S. 436, 447448. The Trademark Remedy Clarification Act (TRCA) subjects States to suits brought under §43(a) of the Trademark Act of 1946 (Lanham Act) for false and misleading advertising. Petitioner markets and sells certificates of deposit designed to finance college costs. When respondent Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Education Expense Board (Florida Prepaid), a Florida state entity, began its own tuition prepayment program, petitioner filed suit, alleging that Florida Prepaid violated §43 by misrepresenting its own program. In granting Florida Prepaids motion to dismiss on sovereign immunity grounds, the District Court rejected arguments made by petitioner and by the United States, which had intervened, that, under the constructive waiver doctrine of Parden v. Terminal R. Co. of Ala. Docks Dept., 377 U.S. 184, Florida Prepaid waived its immunity by engaging in interstate marketing and administration of its program after the TRCA made clear that such activity would subject it to suit; and that Congresss abrogation of sovereign immunity in the TRCA was effective, since it was enacted to enforce the Fourteenth Amendments Due Process Clause. The Third Circuit affirmed.
Held: The federal courts have no jurisdiction to entertain this suit because Floridas sovereign immunity was neither validly abrogated by the TRCA nor voluntarily waived. Pp. 420.
(a) The TRCA did not abrogate Floridas sovereign immunity. Congress may legislate under §5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to enforce the Amendments other provisions, but the object of such legislation must be the remediation or prevention of constitutional violations. Petitioners argument that Congress enacted the TRCA to remedy and prevent state deprivations of two property interests without due process is rejected, for neither a right to be free from a business competitors false advertising about its own product nor a right to be secure in ones business interests qualifies as a protected property right. As to the first: The hallmark of a constitutionally protected property interest is the right to exclude others. The Lanham Acts false-advertising provisions bear no relationship to any right to exclude; and Florida Prepaids alleged misrepresentation concerning its own products intruded upon no interest over which petitioner had exclusive dominion. As to the second asserted property interest: While a businesss assets are property, and any state taking of those assets is a deprivation, business in the sense of the activity of doing business or of making a profit is not property at alland it is only that which is impinged upon by a competitors false advertising about its own product. Pp. 48.
ket participants. Whatever may remain of this Courts decision in Parden is expressly overruled. Pp. 820.
Scalia, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Rehnquist, C. J., and OConnor, Kennedy, and Thomas, JJ., joined. Stevens, J., filed a dissenting opinion. Breyer, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Stevens, Souter, and Ginsburg, JJ., joined.

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