Opinion ID: 2750299
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Responsibility for Judgments

Text: The final Manders factor examines whether the State would bear ultimate responsibility for an adverse judgment against the School District. As the district court found, and neither party disputes, “[t]here is no obligation for the state to pay any judgment against [the School District].” [Doc. 80 at 9]. Nonetheless, the School District argues that because its budget is comprised largely of state funds, the fourth factor should lean in its favor under our analysis in Lesinski and Manders. In Lesinski, we found that although an adverse judgment would be enforceable against the water management district, the state’s treasury would still be directly implicated because if judgment creditors “deplete[d] the District’s funds to the point that it can longer effectively function, the State would ultimately have to choose between increasing its appropriation . . . or shirking its constitutionally mandated duty” to protect the state’s natural resources. Lesinksi, 739 F.3d at 605. Thus, we concluded that the fourth factor favored immunity. The School District argues that Lesinski’s analysis is directly applicable here, because if a large judgment were assessed against the School District, the State would 28 Case: 13-14631 Date Filed: 11/10/2014 Page: 29 of 33 either have to increase its funding or shirk its duty to provide an adequate public education. In Manders, we similarly found that although Georgia would not be liable for a judgment against the sheriff in his official capacity, state funds would still be implicated in the event of a “significant adverse judgment,” because the sheriff would need to seek additional funding from the State, which supplied a portion of his budget. Thus, we found that the fourth factor “at a minimum, . . . [did] not defeat” the sheriff’s immunity claim. Manders, 338 F.3d at 1327–28. In both Lesinski and Manders, we emphasized that the first two factors clearly favored finding immunity, indicating that the entities at issue were closely related to the state. This emphasis was reflected in our analysis of the fourth factor in those cases. In Lesinski, the plaintiff argued that the water management district’s “self-insurance fund” ensured that only the district, and not the state, would pay for an adverse judgment. We rejected that argument because it “‘detach[ed] the importance of a State’s legal liability for judgments against a state agency from its moorings as an indicator of the relationship between the State and its creation.’” Lesinski, 739 F.3d at 605 (quoting Regents of Univ. of Cal. v. Doe, 519 U.S. 425, 430–31, 117 S. Ct. 900, 904–05 (1997)). In Manders, we noted that one purpose of the Eleventh Amendment is to respect the integrity of the state, and 29 Case: 13-14631 Date Filed: 11/10/2014 Page: 30 of 33 that a state’s integrity “is not limited to who foots the bill.” Manders, 338 F.3d at 1328. Here, by contrast, the first two factors do not so strongly favor finding that the School District is an “arm of the State” so as to implicate concerns about the State’s integrity or the “relationship between the State and its creation.” Rather, those factors establish that the School District is a political subdivision with significant local control. Thus, this case is more akin to Stewart, as the School District’s fiscal autonomy means that “it cannot be said that a judgment against [the School District] will come from state funds.” Stewart, 908 F.2d at 1510–11. Thus, the fourth factor indicates that the School District is not an “arm of the State.” In summary, the Manders analysis establishes that the School District is not an “arm of the State” of Georgia entitled to Eleventh Amendment immunity. We reverse the judgment of the district court on this ground and remand for further proceedings.