Opinion ID: 6978959
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Suits by Individuals

Text: Adopted effective January 8, 1798 on demand of the states for protection, the Eleventh Amendment of the Constitution provides that “[t]he Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.” Although the Amendment makes no explicit reference to sovereign immunity, it has consistently been interpreted to mean that a state, as a sovereign entity within our constitutional system, may not be sued by an individual— whether a citizen of that state, another state or a foreign country — in federal court without its consent. See, e.g., Idaho v. Coeur d'Alene Tribe, 521 U.S. 261, —, 117 S.Ct. 2028, 2033, 138 L.Ed.2d 438 (1997) (“To respect the broader concept of [sovereign] immunity, implicit in the Constitution, which we have regarded the Eleventh Amendment as evidencing and exemplifying, we have extended a State’s protection from suit to suits by the State’s own citizens.”); Puerto Rico Aqueduct & Sewer Auth. v. Metcalf & Eddy, 506 U.S. 139, 144, 113 S.Ct. 684, 121 L.Ed.2d 605 (1993) (“Absent waiver, neither a State nor agencies acting under its control may ‘be subject to suit in federal court.’ ” (quoting Welch v. Texas Dept. of Highways and Pub. Transp., 483 U.S. 468, 480, 107 S.Ct. 2941, 97 L.Ed.2d 389 (1987))); Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651, 662-63, 94 S.Ct. 1347, 39 L.Ed.2d 662 (1974) (“this Court has consistently held that an unconsenting State is immune from suits brought in federal courts by her own citizens as well as by citizens of another State”); Ex parte New York, 256 U.S. 490, 497, 41 S.Ct. 588, 65 L.Ed. 1057 (1921) (“the entire judicial power granted by the Constitution does not embrace authority to entertain a suit brought by private parties against a state without consent given”). Disapprobation of the doctrine of immunity, which interferes with “the duty of Government to render prompt justice against itself in favor of its citizens,” Abraham Lincoln, first annual message to Congress, quoted in Clyde E. Jacobs, The Eleventh Amendment and Sovereign Immunity vii (1972), provides no warrant for ignoring a constitutional provision protecting the doctrine. Fortunately, widespread statutory waivers by federal and state governments permitting suits in their own courts have largely eroded this barrier to individual justice. Cf. id. at 5-8 (discussing exceptions in medieval England granting remedy to those wronged by the crown or its officers); id. at 151-164 (criticizing sovereign immunity as a denial of the rule of law); John v. Orth, The Judicial Power of the United States 154 (1987) (same). The Eleventh Amendment limits only suits brought in federal courts by individuals against states.
There is no record of any discussion of state immunity at the Constitutional Convention. Nevertheless, federal courts’ jurisdiction over suits by private citizens against states which had not consented to such litigation was disavowed by the framers of the Constitution during the pre-ratification debate over the meaning and scope of Article III. In response to concerns raised at Virginia’s ratification convention that the Judiciary Article’s provision for suits between a state and citizens of other states would subject the states to suits by individuals in federal court, Madison, our preeminent expert on the Constitution, declared: It is not in the power of individuals to call any State into Court. The only operation [the provision] can have, is, that if a State should wish to bring a suit against a citizen, it must be brought before the Federal Court.... It appears to me that this clause can have no operation but this — to give a citizen a right to be heard in the Federal Court, and if a State should condescend to be a party, this Court may take cognizance of it. 10 Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution 1414 (John P. Kaminski & Gaspare J. Saladino eds., 1993); see also (John Marshall), id. at 1433 (“I hope no Gentleman will think that a State will be called at the bar of the Federal Court.... It is not rational to suppose, that the sovereign power shall be dragged before a Court.”). In New York, Hamilton responded to opponents of ratification in a similar vein: It is inherent in the nature of sovereignty not to be amenable to the suit of an individual without its consent. This is the general sense and the general practice of mankind; and the exemption, as one of the attributes of sovereignty, is now enjoyed by the government of every State in the Union. Unless, therefore, there is a surrender of this immunity in the plan of the convention, [immunity] will remain with the States.... The Federalist No. 81, at 487-88 (Clinton Rossiter ed., 1961). While these statements may be insufficient, standing alone, to establish the existence of a general consensus at the time of the ratification with regard to state sovereign immunity, they may well have played a significant role in seeming the approval of the Constitution in those states where the states’ amenability to suit by individuals in federal court was at issue. See Jackson Turner Main, The Antifederalists: Critics of the Constitution 157 (1961). That the states expected their immunity from private suits — at least those brought by noncitizens — to continue under the Constitution was soon made plain by their reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision in Chisolm v. Georgia, 2 U.S. (2 Dall.) 419, 1 L.Ed. 440 (1793), which held that Article III authorized federal jurisdiction over a suit by a South Carolina citizen against the state of Georgia. The response to Chisolm was so intense that it took only three weeks for both houses of Congress to approve the Eleventh Amendment, and it was promptly ratified. See Erwin Chemerin-sky, Federal Jurisdiction § 7.2, at 374 (2d ed.1994); see also Richard H. Fallon et al., Hart and Wechsler’s The Federal Courts and the Federal System 1048 (4th ed.1996). While many have speculated that the vigor of the states’ reaction to Chisolm was due to their fear of a rash of lawsuits to collect unpaid Revolutionary War debts, see Cheme-rinsky, id. & n. 23, the reasons for the overwhelming support of the Eleventh Amendment were more complex. The Amendment was supported by both states’ rights advocates and pro-creditor nationalists; assumption of the public debt under Hamilton’s financial program had already alleviated much of the states’ financial burdens arising from the War of Independence. See Clyde E. Jacobs, The Eleventh Amendment and Sovereign Immunity 70-74 (1972). Whatever the motives, the Amendment stands as a barrier to private suits against a state in federal court without the state’s consent. It is well established that “[t]he Eleventh Amendment does not exist solely in order to preven[t] federal court judgments that must be paid out of a State’s treasury.” Seminole Tribe v. Florida, 517 U.S. 44, 58, 116 S.Ct. 1114, 134 L.Ed.2d 252 (1996) (internal quotation marks and -citations omitted). The Amendment’s “very object and purpose ... were to prevent the indignity of subjecting a state to the coercive process of judicial tribunals at the instance of private parties.” In re Ayers, 123 U.S. 443, 505, 8 S.Ct. 164, 31 L.Ed. 216 (1887); see also Idaho v. Coeur d'Alene Tribe, 521 U.S. 261, -, 117 S.Ct. 2028, 2033, 138 L.Ed.2d 438 (1997) (immunity is designed to protect “the dignity and respect afforded a State”); Puerto Rico Aqueduct & Sewer Auth. v. Metcalf & Eddy, Inc., 506 U.S. 139, 146, 113 S.Ct. 684, 121 L.Ed.2d 605 (1993) (“[The Amendment] accords the States the respect owed them as members of the federation.”).
The current broad conception of the Eleventh Amendment as the constitutional guarantor of state sovereign immunity is usually traced to the Supreme Court’s decision in Hans v. Louisiana, 134 U.S. 1, 10 S.Ct. 504, 33 L.Ed. 842 (1890). See, e.g., Seminole Tribe v. Florida, 517 U.S. at 54, 116 S.Ct. 1114; Blatchford v. Native Village of Noatak, 501 U.S. 775, 779, 111 S.Ct. 2578, 115 L.Ed.2d 686 (1991); see also Richard H. Fallon et al., Hart and Wechsler’s The Federal Courts and the Federal System 1051 (4th ed.1996) (“[T]here is no doubt that the decision marked a critical turning point, and that ever since, the Court has not adhered to a ‘literal’ reading of the Amendment in determining its effect on federal jurisdiction.”). In Hans a Louisiana citizen and bondholder sued the State of Louisiana claiming that the state’s adoption of a constitutional amendment prohibiting the payment of interest on its bonds violated the Contracts Clause of the Constitution. Acknowledging that the literal terms of the Eleventh Amendment did not apply to suits by in-state plaintiffs, Hans, 134 U.S. at 10, 10 S.Ct. 504, the Court nonetheless refused to limit the reach of the Amendment to its “letter.” Id. at 15, 10 S.Ct. 504. In extending the states’ immunity from suit beyond the text of the Amendment, the Court relied on the already quoted views of Madison, Hamilton and Marshall. See Part III.A.I.a., supra. It recalled the “shock of surprise,” Hans, 134 U.S. at 11, 10 S.Ct. 504, arising from the Supreme Court’s decision in Chilsolm v. Georgia, 2 U.S. (2 Dali.) 419, 1 L.Ed. 440 (1793): 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.... Suppose that congress, when proposing the eleventh amendment, had appended to it a proviso that nothing therein contained should prevent a state from being sued by its own citizens in cases arising under the constitution or laws of the United States, can we imagine that it would have been adopted by the states? The supposition that it would is almost an absurdity on its face. Hans, 134 U.S. at 15, 10 S.Ct. 504. Criticism of the Hans Court’s approach and its conception of a broad principle of sovereign immunity implicit in the constitutional design have been at the heart of much of the debate over the meaning and scope of the Eleventh Amendment. See, e.g., Seminole Tribe v. Florida, 517 U.S. 44, 84-93, 116 S.Ct. 1114, 134 L.Ed.2d 252 (1996) (Stevens, J., dissenting); id. at 116-85, 116 S.Ct. 1114 (Souter, J., dissenting); Atascadero State Hosp. v. Scanlon, 473 U.S. 234, 259-302, 105 S.Ct. 3142, 87 L.Ed.2d 171 (Brennan, J., dissenting). As the Supreme Court noted recently, “[t]hese criticisms and proposed doctrinal revisions ... have not found acceptance with a majority of the Court.” Idaho v. Coeur d’Alene Tribe, 521 U.S. 261, -, 117 S.Ct. 2028, 2033, 138 L.Ed.2d 438 (1997). On the contrary, a consistent course of Supreme Court decisions has reaffirmed the principle that the Eleventh Amendment functions as a constitutional limit on the jurisdictional grant contained in Article III. See, e .g., Idaho v. Coeur d'Alene Tribe, at -, 117 S.Ct. at 2034 (“[Eleventh Amendment immunity represents a real limitation on a federal court’s federal-question jurisdiction.”); Seminole Tribe, 517 U.S. at 63, 116 S.Ct. 1114 (“[T]he Eleventh Amendment st[ands] for the constitutional principle that state sovereign immunity limit[s] the federal courts’ jurisdiction under Article III.”); Atascadero State Hosp. v. Scanlon, 473 U.S. at 238, 105 S.Ct. 3142 (“[T]he significance of this Amendment ‘lies in its affirmation that the fundamental principle of sovereign immunity limits the grant of judicial authority in Art. Ill of the Constitution.’” (quoting Pennhurst State Sch. & Hosp. v. Halderman, 465 U.S. 89, 98, 104 S.Ct. 900, 79 L.Ed.2d 67 (1984) (Pennhurst II))).
In keeping with the broad and fundamental nature of state sovereign immunity, the Supreme Court has circumscribed necessary exceptions to the states’' Eleventh Amendment guarantee of immunity. It has conceded that the states may explicitly waive their immunity and subject themselves to suit in federal court without violating the Eleventh Amendment. See Atascadero State Hosp. v. Scanlon, 473 U.S. at 238, 105 S.Ct. 3142 (“[I]f a State waives its immunity and consents to suit in federal court, the Eleventh Amendment does not bar the action.”). A state’s immunity will be deemed waived, however, “only where stated ‘by the most the most express language or by such overwhelming implications from the text as [will] leave no room for any other reasonable construction.’ ” Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651, 673, 94 S.Ct. 1347, 39 L.Ed.2d 662 (1974) (quoting Murray v. Wilson Distilling Co., 213 U.S. 151, 171, 29 S.Ct. 458, 53 L.Ed. 742 (1909)); see also Port Auth. Trans-Hudson Corp. v. Feeney, 495 U.S. 299, 305-06, 110 S.Ct. 1868, 109 L.Ed.2d 264 (1990) (“solicitude for States’ sovereign immunity” is basis for requirement that States’ intent to waive immunity be clearly expressed). Suits by individuals against state officers to enjoin future violations of federal law are also permitted, under Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123, 28 S.Ct. 441, 52 L.Ed. 714 (1908), even when compliance with the injunction might lead to the incidental expenditure of substantial state funds. See, e.g., Quern v. Jordan, 440 U.S. 332, 349, 99 S.Ct. 1139, 59 L.Ed.2d 358 (1979) (upholding order to send members of plaintiffs class notice of entitlement to administrative relief even though this could lead to monetary claims against the state since order was “more properly viewed as ancillary to the prospective relief already ordered by the court”); Milliken v. Bradley, 433 U.S. 267, 288-90, 97 S.Ct. 2749, 53 L.Ed.2d 745 (1977) (upholding school desegregation decree requiring state to pay half of costs associated with remedial educational programs for children subjected to past segregation); see also Patrick J. Barrett, Case Comment, Edward T. Young Still Living the Good Life: Coeur D'Alene Tribe v. Idaho, 73 Notre Dame L.Rev. 1077 (1998) (arguing that Supreme Court’s recent decision in Coeur dAlene Tribe does not curtail the ability of private plaintiffs to seek prospective relief from state officials in federal court under the doctrine of Ex paHe Young). The injunction exception does not encompass suits against state officers in then official capacities for retroactive relief to be payed from the state treasury since such litigations resemble suits for money damages against the state itself. See Edelman, 415 U.S. at 663, 94 S.Ct. 1347 (“[T]he rule has evolved that a suit by private parties seeking to impose a liability which must be paid from public funds in the state treasury is barred by the Eleventh Amendment.”); Ford Motor Co. v. Department of the Treasury, 323 U.S. 459, 464, 65 S.Ct. 347, 89 L.Ed. 389 (1945) (“[W]hen the action is in essence one for the recovery of money from the state, the state is the real, substantial party in interest and is entitled to invoke its sovereign immunity from suit even though individual officials are nominal defendants.”). Any attempted abrogation by Congress of the states’ Eleventh Amendment immunity is subject to two strict requirements. See, e.g., Seminole Tribe v. Florida, 517 U.S. 44, 55, 116 S.Ct. 1114, 134 L.Ed.2d 252 (1996); College Savings Bank v. Florida Prepaid Post-secondary Educ. Expense Bd., 148 F.3d 1343, 1347 (Fed.Cir.1998). First, Congress must unequivocally express its intent to abrogate the immunity, a requirement which arises from “the Eleventh Amendment’s role as an essential component of our constitutional structure.” Dellmuth v. Muth, 491 U.S. 223, 228, 109 S.Ct. 2397, 105 L.Ed.2d 181 (1989). See id. at 230, 109 S.Ct. 2397 (“[Ejvidence of congressional intent [to abrogate] must be both unequivocal and textual.”); Atascadero State Hosp. v. Scanlon, 473 U.S. 234, 246, 105 S.Ct. 3142, 87 L.Ed.2d 171 (1985) (“A general authorization for suit in federal court is not the kind of unequivocal statutory language sufficient to abrogate the Eleventh Amendment.”). Second, Congress’ abrogation of sovereign immunity must be “pursuant to a valid exercise of power” under section five of the Fourteenth Amendment. See Seminole Tribe, 517 U.S. 44, 55, 65-66, 116 S.Ct. 1114, 134 L.Ed.2d 252. The Fourteenth Amendment warrants this distinction, the Seminole Tribe Court explained, because it was adopted “well after the adoption of the Eleventh Amendment and the ratification of the Constitution [and it] operated to alter the pre-existing balance between the state and federal power achieved by Article III and the Eleventh Amendment.” Seminole Tribe, 517 U.S. 44, 65-66, 116 S.Ct. 1114, 134 L.Ed.2d 252; see also College Savings Bank v. Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Educ. Expense Bd., 148 F.3d 1343, 1352 (Fed.Cir.1998) (“When the states adopted the Fourteenth Amendment and consented to cede a portion of their authority to the federal government, it was within their contemplation that they limited their Eleventh Amendment immunity.”)