Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-11/state-sovereign-immunity
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 02:23:07+00:00

Document:
Though Eleventh Amendment jurisprudence can appear esoteric and abstruse and the decisions under it inconsistent, the Amendment remains a vital element of federal jurisdiction that “go[es] to the very heart of [the] federal system and affect[s] the allocation of power between the United States and the several states.”1 The limit on state accountability in federal courts embodied through the Amendment might seem a discrete, straightforward adjustment of our federal structure precipitated by early case law, but discerning the implications of this embodiment continues to occasion heated dispute.
Expansion of the Immunity of the States.
Under this view, the amendment reversed an erroneous decision and restored the proper interpretation of the Constitution. The views of the opponents of subjecting states to suit “were most sensible and just; and [those views] apply equally to the present case as to that then under discussion. The letter is appealed to now, as it was then, as a ground for sustaining a suit brought by an individual against a State. The reason against it is as strong in this case as it was in that. It is an attempt to strain the Constitution and the law to a construction never imagined or dreamed of.”25 “The truth is, that the cognizance of suits and actions unknown to the law, and forbidden by the law, was not contemplated by the Constitution when establishing the judicial power of the United States. . . . The suability of a State without its consent was a thing unknown to the law.”26 Thus, although the literal terms of the Amendment did not so provide, “the manner in which [Chisholm] was received by the country, the adoption of the Eleventh Amendment, the light of history and the reason of the thing,”27 led the Court unanimously to hold that states could not be sued by their own citizens on grounds arising under the Constitution and laws of the United States.
In the 1980s, four Justices, led by Justice Brennan, argued that Hans was incorrectly decided, that the Amendment was intended only to deny jurisdiction against the states in diversity cases, and that Hans and its progeny should be overruled.33 But the remaining five Justices adhered to Hans and in fact stiffened it with a rule of construction quite severe in its effect.34 The Hans interpretation was further solidified with the Court’s ruling in Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida,35 that Congress lacks the power under Article I to abrogate state immunity under the Eleventh Amendment, and with its ruling in Alden v. Maine36 that the broad principle of sovereign immunity reflected in the Eleventh Amendment bars suits against states in state courts as well as federal.
Having previously reserved the question of whether federal statutory rights could be enforced in state courts,37 the Court in Alden v. Maine38 held that states could also assert Eleventh Amendment “sovereign immunity” in their own courts. Recognizing that the application of the Eleventh Amendment, which limits only the federal courts, was a “misnomer”39 as applied to state courts, the Court nonetheless concluded that the principles of common law sovereign immunity applied absent “compelling evidence” that the states had surrendered such by the ratification of the Constitution. Although this immunity is subject to the same limitations as apply in federal courts, the Court’s decision effectively limited the application of significant portions of federal law to state governments. Both Seminole Tribe and Alden were also 5–4 decisions with the four dissenting Justices maintaining that Hans was wrongly decided.
Consent to Suit and Waiver.
In the 1989 case of Pennsylvania v. Union Gas Co.,92 the Court— temporarily at least—ended years of uncertainty by holding expressly that Congress acting pursuant to its Article I powers (as opposed to its Fourteenth Amendment powers) may abrogate the Eleventh Amendment immunity of the states, so long as it does so with sufficient clarity. Twenty-five years earlier the Court had stated that same principle,93 but only as an alternative holding, and a later case had set forth a more restrictive rule.94 The premises of Union Gas were that by consenting to ratification of the Constitution, with its Commerce Clause and other clauses empowering Congress and limiting the states, the states had implicitly authorized Congress to divest them of immunity, that the Eleventh Amendment was a restraint upon the courts and not similarly upon Congress, and that the exercises of Congress’s powers under the Commerce Clause and other clauses would be incomplete without the ability to authorize damage actions against the states to enforce congressional enactments. The dissenters disputed each of these strands of the argument, and, while recognizing the Fourteenth Amendment abrogation power, would have held that no such power existed under Article I.
Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, of course, is another matter. Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer,100 which was “based upon a rationale wholly inapplicable to the Interstate Commerce Clause, viz., that the Fourteenth Amendment, adopted well after the adoption of the Eleventh Amendment and the ratification of the Constitution, operated to alter the pre-existing balance between state and federal power achieved by Article III and the Eleventh Amendment,” remains good law.
Courts may open their doors for relief against government wrongs under the doctrine that sovereign immunity does not prevent a suit to restrain individual officials, thereby restraining the government as well.113 The doctrine is built upon a double fiction: that for purposes of the sovereign’s immunity, a suit against an official is not a suit against the government, but for the purpose of finding state action to which the Constitution applies, the official’s conduct is that of the state.114 The doctrine preceded but is most noteworthily associated with the decision in Ex parte Young,115 a case that deserves the overworked adjective, seminal.
Young arose when a state legislature passed a law reducing railroad rates and providing severe penalties for any railroad that failed to comply with the law. Plaintiff railroad stockholders brought a federal action to enjoin Young, the state attorney general, from enforcing the law, alleging that it was unconstitutional and that they would suffer irreparable harm if he were not prevented from acting. An injunction was granted forbidding Young from acting on the law, an injunction he violated by bringing an action in state court against noncomplying railroads; for this action he was adjudged in contempt. If the Supreme Court had held that the injunction was not permissible, because the suit was one against the state, there would have been no practicable way for the railroads to attack the statute without placing themselves in great danger. They could have disobeyed it and alleged its unconstitutionality as a defense in enforcement proceedings, but if they were wrong about the statute’s validity the penalties would have been devastating.116 On the other hand, effectuating constitutional rights through an injunction would not have been possible had the injunction been deemed to be a suit against the state.
The “fiction” remains a mainstay of our jurisprudence.131 It accounts for a great deal of the litigation brought by individuals to challenge the carrying out of state policies. Suits against state officers alleging that they are acting pursuant to an unconstitutional statute are the standard device by which to test the validity of state legislation in federal courts prior to enforcement and thus interpretation in the state courts.132 Similarly, suits to restrain state officials from taking certain actions in contravention of federal statutes133 or to compel the undertaking of affirmative obligations imposed by the Constitution or federal laws134 are common.
That Edelman in many instances will be a formal restriction rather than an actual one is illustrated by Milliken v. Bradley,151 in which state officers were ordered to spend money from the state treasury in order to finance remedial educational programs to counteract the effects of past school segregation; the decree, the Court said, “fits squarely within the prospective-compliance exception reaffirmed by Edelman.”152 Although the payments were a result of past wrongs, of past constitutional violations, the Court did not view them as “compensation,” inasmuch as they were not to be paid to victims of past discrimination but rather used to better conditions either for them or their successors.153 The Court also applied Edelman in Papasan v. Allain,154 holding that a claim against a state for payments representing a continuing obligation to meet trust responsibilities stemming from a 19th century grant of public lands for benefit of education of the Chickasaw Indian Nation is barred by the Eleventh Amendment as indistinguishable from an action for past loss of trust corpus, but that an Equal Protection claim for present unequal distribution of school land funds is the type of on-going violation for which the Eleventh Amendment does not bar redress.
Thus, as with the cases dealing with suits facially against the states themselves, the Court’s greater attention to state immunity in the context of suits against state officials has resulted in a mixed picture, of some new restrictions, of the lessening of others. But a number of Justices have increasingly resorted to the Eleventh Amendment as a means to reduce federal-state judicial conflict.162 One may, therefore, expect this to be a continuingly contentious area.
Tort Actions Against State Officials.

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