Opinion ID: 2638592
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Supreme Court's Opinion in Alden v. Maine

Text: {4} In Alden, a group of Maine probation officers filed FLSA claims for overtime wages and liquidated damages in state court. 527 U.S. at 711-12, 119 S.Ct. 2240. The Supreme Court reviewed the determination by the courts of Maine that these FLSA claims were barred by sovereign immunity. Id. More specifically, the Court addressed whether Congress has the power under Article I of the United States Constitution to subject nonconsenting states to private suits for damages in state court. Id. In order to put the Supreme Court's analysis of this issue in its proper context, it is necessary to review two earlier opinions from the Court. {5} In Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, 469 U.S. 528, 555-56, 105 S.Ct. 1005, 83 L.Ed.2d 1016 (1985), the Court held that Congress has the power under the Commerce Clause of Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution to enforce the substantive requirements of the FLSA against the States. In reaching this conclusion, the Court overruled its earlier pronouncement in National League of Cities v. Usery, 426 U.S. 833, 852, 96 S.Ct. 2465, 49 L.Ed.2d 245 (1976), that Congress could not, under the guise of the Commerce Clause, interfere with a state's ability to structure employment relationships between the state and its employees in areas of traditional governmental functions. The Court in Garcia determined that the traditional governmental function test of National League of Cities is not only unworkable but is also inconsistent with established principles of federalism. Garcia, 469 U.S. at 531, 105 S.Ct. 1005. In place of the traditional governmental function test, the Court explained that the appropriate focus for a federalism inquiry in this context should be the express authorization of congressional power in the text of the Constitution. Id. at 549, 105 S.Ct. 1005. Though the States retain significant sovereignty in the federalist system, [t]hey do so . . . only to the extent that the Constitution has not divested them of their original powers and transferred those powers to the Federal Government. Id. If the Constitution authorizes Congress to act, such as through the Commerce Clause, then the States are protected from congressional overreaching not by their inherent sovereignty but by the structure of the Federal Government itself, id. at 550, and the States' significant role in the federal political process. Id. at 552. The Court determined that nothing in the overtime and minimum-wage requirements of the FLSA . . . is destructive of state sovereignty or violative of any constitutional provision. Id. at 554. Because the protections of the wage and hour provisions of the FLSA contravened no affirmative limit on Congress' power under the Commerce Clause, the Court upheld the application of the substantive provisions of the FLSA to the States. Id. at 555-56. As a valid exercise of Congress's constitutional power under Article I, Section 8, the substantive provisions of the FLSA are binding on the States pursuant to the Supremacy Clause of Article VI of the Constitution. {6} In Seminole Tribe v. Florida, 517 U.S. 44, 116 S.Ct. 1114, 134 L.Ed.2d 252 (1996), the Supreme Court addressed a related issue of federalism: whether Congress has the power to abrogate the States' sovereign immunity from suit by providing a private remedy in federal court for a state's violation of a federal statute. The Court held that the background principle of state sovereign immunity embodied in the Eleventh Amendment precludes Congress from authorizing suits in federal court by private parties against a nonconsenting state, id. at 72, 116 S.Ct. 1114, unless Congress acts pursuant to its powers under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which operated to alter the pre-existing balance between state and federal power achieved by Article III and the Eleventh Amendment. Id. at 65-66, 116 S.Ct. 1114. The Eleventh Amendment restricts the judicial power under Article III, and Article I cannot be used to circumvent the constitutional limitations placed upon federal jurisdiction. Id. at 72-73, 116 S.Ct. 1114. {7} As a logical progression, the Court addressed in Alden the inevitable question growing out of its opinions in Garcia and Seminole Tribe: given Congress's power to apply the substantive provisions of the FLSA against the States under Garcia but the Eleventh Amendment's restriction on private remedies against nonconsenting states in federal court under Seminole Tribe, does Congress have the power to provide for the enforcement of the private remedies in the FLSA against a state in the state's own courts without its consent? Specifically, the Court addressed the constitutionality of 29 U.S.C. § 216(b), which allows state employees to pursue an action against their employer in a State court of competent jurisdiction for damages in the amount of . . . [the employees'] unpaid overtime compensation. . . and in an additional equal amount as liquidated damages, as well as reasonable attorney's fees and costs. The Court held in Alden that the States retain immunity from private suit in their own courts, an immunity beyond the congressional power to abrogate by Article I legislation. Alden, 527 U.S. at 754, 119 S.Ct. 2240. The Court, however, did not rely directly on the Eleventh Amendment, as in Seminole Tribe, or on a specific limitation on Congress's power in the Constitution, as outlined in Garcia. See Alden, 527 U.S. at 728, 119 S.Ct. 2240 (discussing the settled doctrinal understanding, consistent with the views of the leading advocates of the Constitution's ratification, that sovereign immunity derives not from the Eleventh Amendment but from the structure of the original Constitution itself). Instead, the Court relied on the States' immunity from suit [as] a fundamental aspect of [their] sovereignty. Alden, 527 U.S. at 713, 119 S.Ct. 2240. Thus, despite the Court's earlier admonition in Garcia that the fundamental limitation that the constitutional scheme imposes on the Commerce Clause to protect the `States as States' is one of process rather than one of result, Garcia, 469 U.S. at 554, 105 S.Ct. 1005, and its disbelief that courts ultimately can identify principled constitutional limitations on the scope of Congress' Commerce Clause powers over the States merely by relying on a priori definitions of state sovereignty, id. at 548, 105 S.Ct. 1005, the Court returned to an analysis of the fundamental attributes of state sovereignty, id. at 556, 105 S.Ct. 1005, in order to review the availability of the FLSA's private remedies in state courts. See Alden, 527 U.S. at 729, 119 S.Ct. 2240 ([T]he scope of the States' immunity from suit is demarcated not by the text of the [Eleventh] Amendment alone but by fundamental postulates implicit in the constitutional design.). {8} The Court in Alden determined that state sovereign immunity inheres in the system of federalism established by the Constitution. 527 U.S. at 730, 119 S.Ct. 2240. In reaching this conclusion, the Court relied on four aspects of constitutional interpretation: (1) original understanding of the Constitution; (2) early congressional practice; (3) Supreme Court precedent; and (4) the structure of the Constitution. Id. at 741-54, 119 S.Ct. 2240. Relying heavily on the structure of the document itself, the Court noted that our federalism requires that Congress treat the States in a manner consistent with their status as residuary sovereigns and joint participants in the governance of the Nation. Id. at 748, 119 S.Ct. 2240. The principle of sovereign immunity preserved by constitutional design thus accords the States the respect owed them as members of the federation. Id. at 748-49, 119 S.Ct. 2240 (internal quotation marks and quoted authority omitted). A power to press a State's own courts into federal service to coerce the other branches of the State . . . is the power first to turn the State against itself and ultimately to commandeer the entire political machinery of the State against its will and at the behest of individuals. Such plenary federal control of state governmental processes denigrates the separate sovereignty of the States. Id. at 749, 119 S.Ct. 2240 (citation omitted). Based on these principles, the Court determined that the remedial provisions of the FLSA cannot be enforced against a state in the state's courts without its consent. The Court further determined that the State of Maine had not waived its sovereign immunity from suit and therefore affirmed the dismissal of the FLSA claims. Id. at 758, 760, 119 S.Ct. 2240. It is within this context that the Supreme Court remanded the present case to the Court of Appeals for further consideration.