Opinion ID: 496991
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Standards for Imputing Congressional Intent to Abrogate

Text: 12 the Eleventh Amendment 13 In our original panel opinion, we noted that eleventh amendment immunity can be avoided in only two ways: (a) Congress can abrogate it by providing through statute for suits against states, or (b) states can waive their sovereign immunity and consent to be sued. Union Gas I, 792 F.2d at 376 (emphasis in original). After the vacatur of our previous opinion, the Supreme Court decided Welch and noted the same two exceptions to the eleventh amendment's reach. See 107 S.Ct. at 2945-46. 14 We also explained in Union Gas I that, because of the eleventh amendment's importance in maintaining the balance of power between state and federal interests, 792 F.2d at 376, the Supreme Court requires Congress to express its intention to abrogate the Eleventh Amendment in unmistakable language in the statute itself. Id. (quoting Atascadero State Hospital v. Scanlon, 473 U.S. at 243, 105 S.Ct. at 3148); see also Pennhurst II, 465 U.S. 89, 99, 104 S.Ct. at 907 (1984); Quern v. Jordan, 440 U.S. 332, 342-45, 99 S.Ct. 1139, 1146-47, 59 L.Ed.2d 358 (1979). 15 The Court has insisted that the statute, when read literally, not merely allow suits against the state, but that it do so with such specificity that it is clear that Congress consciously and directly focused on the issue of state sovereign immunity and chose to abrogate it. 16 792 F.2d at 376 (citations omitted). 17 The Supreme Court reaffirmed these principles in Welch, which emphasized that Congress can create an exception to the reach of the eleventh amendment only if it expresses its intent to do so in unmistakable language in the statute itself. Welch overturned, at least in part, the decision in Parden v. Terminal Railway of Alabama Docks Dept., 377 U.S. 184, 84 S.Ct. 1207, 12 L.Ed.2d 233 (1964), in which the Court had found that Congress had intended to abrogate states' eleventh amendment immunity when it enacted the Federal Employers' Liability Act (FELA) and regulated [e]very common carrier by railroad while engaging in commerce between any of the several States.... 45 U.S.C. Sec. 51 (1982). Every common carrier, held Parden, included state-owned railroads and thus abrogated their eleventh amendment immunity. Welch explicitly overruled this holding in Parden, reinterpreting the very same provision of the FELA as it was incorporated by reference in the Jones Act. 18 Although our later decisions do not expressly overrule Parden, they leave no doubt that Parden 's discussion of congressional intent to negate Eleventh Amendment immunity is no longer good law.... In subsequent cases the Court consistently has required an unequivocal expression that Congress intended to override Eleventh Amendment immunity. Accordingly, to the extent that Parden v. Terminal Railway ... is inconsistent with the requirement that an abrogation of Eleventh Amendment immunity by Congress must be expressed in unmistakably clear language, it is overruled. 19 107 S.Ct. at 2948 (citations and footnote omitted).