Opinion ID: 680033
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Congressional Intent to Abrogate

Text: 16 The Supreme Court adheres to a rigorous test to determine whether Congress has abrogated the States' Eleventh Amendment immunity: Congress must make its intention to abrogate unmistakably clear in the language of the statute. Dellmuth, 491 U.S. at 228, 109 S.Ct. at 2400 (quoting Atascadero State Hospital v. Scanlon, 473 U.S. 234, 242, 105 S.Ct. 3142, 3147, 87 L.Ed.2d 171 (1985)). It is not sufficient generally that Congress has given jurisdiction to federal courts to consider certain kinds of claims. The mere fact that Congress grants jurisdiction to hear a claim does not suffice to show Congress has abrogated all defenses to that claim. Blatchford, 501 U.S. at 786 n. 4, 111 S.Ct. at 2585 n. 4; Atascadero, 473 U.S. at 246, 105 S.Ct. at 3149 (A general authorization for suit in federal court is not the kind of unequivocal statutory language sufficient to abrogate the Eleventh Amendment.). Rather, to abrogate the states' Eleventh Amendment immunity, Congress must clearly express its intent that states may be brought into federal court to answer to the particular charge at issue. 17 IGRA specifically empowers federal courts to entertain any cause of action initiated by an Indian tribe arising from the failure of a State to enter into negotiations with the Indian tribe. 25 U.S.C. Sec. 2710(d)(7)(A)(i). Additionally, Section 2710(d)(7)(B) places the burden of proving good faith in such an action on the states. Inasmuch as a state is the only conceivable defendant in such a suit, and it must be contemplated that the state will be a party if a burden of proof is allocated to it, Congress has unmistakably expressed its intent to subject states to suit in federal court under IGRA and thus satisfies the Supreme Court's abrogation test. Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida, 11 F.3d 1016, 1024 (11th Cir.1994); Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe v. South Dakota, 3 F.3d 273, 281 (8th Cir.1993). Indeed, every court that has considered this question has concluded that IGRA embodies a clear expression of Congressional intent to abrogate state sovereign immunity. Neither the states nor amici in the instant case has cited any authority to the contrary. 18 Despite IGRA's failure to refer specifically to the Eleventh Amendment, as Congress did, for example, in the Americans with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. Sec. 12202, we do not read the Supreme Court's Eleventh Amendment jurisprudence as imposing any such requirement. Indeed, the Supreme Court has found Congressional abrogation even when federal statutes fail to refer specifically to the Eleventh Amendment or state sovereign immunity. See, e.g., Pennsylvania v. Union Gas Co., 491 U.S. 1, 13, 109 S.Ct. 2273, 2280, 105 L.Ed.2d 1 (1989); Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, 427 U.S. 445, 449, 96 S.Ct. 2666, 2668, 49 L.Ed.2d 614 (1976). 5 19 To be sure, the Court in Dellmuth observed that the Education of the Handicapped Act (EHA), 20 U.S.C. Sec. 1400 et seq., makes no reference whatsoever to either the Eleventh Amendment or the State's sovereign immunity. Dellmuth, 491 U.S. at 231, 109 S.Ct. at 2402. However, the Court's conclusion in Dellmuth that the EHA did not abrogate the states' Eleventh Amendment turned not on the absence of any specific mention of the Eleventh Amendment, but rather on the determination that the statute's structure merely created a permissible inference that Congress intended to subject the States to damage actions for violations of the EHA and it did not compel such a conclusion. Id. at 231-32, 109 S.Ct. at 2402-03. 6 In contrast, the only inference that can be drawn from IGRA's language is that Congress meant to strip the states of their Eleventh Amendment immunity for failing to negotiate a tribal-State compact in good faith. 25 U.S.C. Sec. 2710(d)(7)(A)(i). 20 Congress need not express its intent to abrogate in a particular talismanic incantation, but can make its intention unmistakably clear in the text of a statute without specific reference to the Eleventh Amendment or state sovereign immunity. Because IGRA satisfies this test, we affirm the district courts' ruling that Congress intended to abrogate the states' Eleventh Amendment immunity in IGRA.