Opinion ID: 111742
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Amendment provides:

Text: The 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. This language expressly encompasses only suits brought against a State by citizens of another State, but this Court long ago held that the Amendment bars suits against a State by citizens of that same State as well. See Hans v. Louisiana, 134 U. S. 1 (1890). [I]n the absence of consent a suit in which the State or one of its agencies or departments is named as the defendant is proscribed by the Eleventh Amendment. Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman, 465 U. S. 89, 100 (1984). [10] This bar exists whether the relief sought is legal or equitable. Id., at 100-101. Where the State itself or one of its agencies or departments is not named as defendant and where a state official is named instead, the Eleventh Amendment status of the suit is less straightforward. Ex parte Young, 209 U. S. 123 (1908), held that a suit to enjoin as unconstitutional a state official's action was not barred by the Amendment. This holding was based on a determination that an unconstitutional state enactment is void and that any action by a state official that is purportedly authorized by that enactment cannot be taken in an official capacity since the state authorization for such action is a nullity. As the Court explained in Young itself: If the act which the state Attorney General seeks to enforce be a violation of the Federal Constitution, the officer proceeding under such enactment comes into conflict with the superior authority of that Constitution, and he is in that case stripped of his official or representative character and is subjected in his person to the consequences of his individual conduct. The State has no power to impart to him any immunity from responsibility to the supreme authority of the United States. Id., at 159-160. Thus, the official, although acting in his official capacity, may be sued in federal court. See also Pennhurst, supra, at 102, 105; Hutto v. Finney, 437 U. S. 678, 692 (1978). Young, however, does not insulate from Eleventh Amendment challenge every suit in which a state official is the named defendant. In accordance with its original rationale, Young applies only where the underlying authorization upon which the named official acts is asserted to be illegal. See Cory v. White, 457 U. S. 85 (1982). And it does not foreclose an Eleventh Amendment challenge where the official action is asserted to be illegal as a matter of state law alone. See Pennhurst, supra, at 104-106. In such a case, federal supremacy is not implicated because the state official is acting contrary to state law only. We have also described certain types of cases that formally meet the Young requirements of a state official acting inconsistently with federal law but that stretch that case too far and would upset the balance of federal and state interests that it embodies. Young 's applicability has been tailored to conform as precisely as possible to those specific situations in which it is necessary to permit the federal courts to vindicate federal rights and hold state officials responsible to `the supreme authority of the United States.'  Pennhurst, supra, at 105 (quoting Young, supra, at 160). Consequently, Young has been focused on cases in which a violation of federal law by a state official is ongoing as opposed to cases in which federal law has been violated at one time or over a period of time in the past, as well as on cases in which the relief against the state official directly ends the violation of federal law as opposed to cases in which that relief is intended indirectly to encourage compliance with federal law through deterrence or directly to meet third-party interests such as compensation. As we have noted: Remedies designed to end a continuing violation of federal law are necessary to vindicate the federal interest in assuring the supremacy of that law. But compensatory or deterrence interests are insufficient to overcome the dictates of the Eleventh Amendment. Green v. Mansour, 474 U. S. 64, 68 (1985) (citation omitted). Relief that in essence serves to compensate a party injured in the past by an action of a state official in his official capacity that was illegal under federal law is barred even when the state official is the named defendant. [11] This is true if the relief is expressly denominated as damages. See, e. g., Ford Motor Co. v. Department of Treasury of Indiana, 323 U. S. 459 (1945). It is also true if the relief is tantamount to an award of damages for a past violation of federal law, even though styled as something else. See, e. g., Green v. Mansour, supra, at 69-70; Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U. S. 651, 664-668 (1974). On the other hand, relief that serves directly to bring an end to a present violation of federal law is not barred by the Eleventh Amendment even though accompanied by a substantial ancillary effect on the state treasury. See Milliken v. Bradley, 433 U. S. 267, 289-290 (1977); Edelman, supra, at 667-668. For Eleventh Amendment purposes, the line between permitted and prohibited suits will often be indistinct: [T]he difference between the type of relief barred by the Eleventh Amendment and that permitted under Ex parte Young will not in many instances be that between day and night. Edelman, supra, at 667. Compare, e. g., Quern v. Jordan, 440 U. S. 332 (1979), with Green v. Mansour, supra . In discerning on which side of the line a particular case falls, we look to the substance rather than to the form of the relief sought, see, e. g., Edelman, supra, at 668, and will be guided by the policies underlying the decision in Ex parte Young.