Opinion ID: 6978959
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Suits by the United States

Text: It is well settled that the states’ Eleventh Amendment immunity does not extend to suits brought against them by the federal government. See, e.g., West Virginia v. United States, 479 U.S. 305, 311, 107 S.Ct. 702, 93 L.Ed.2d 639 (1987); United States v. Mississippi, 380 U.S. 128, 140, 85 S.Ct. 808, 13 L.Ed.2d 717 (1965) (“[N]othing in this or any other provision of the Constitution prevents or has ever been seriously supposed to prevent a State’s being sued by the United States.”); United States v. Minnesota, 270 U.S. 181, 195, 46 S.Ct. 298, 70 L.Ed. 539 (1926) (“[T]he immunity of the state is subject to the constitutional qualification that she may be sued in this Court by the United States.... ”); United States v. Texas, 143 U.S. 621, 645, 12 S.Ct. 488, 36 L.Ed. 285 (1892) (“It would be difficult to suggest any reason why this court should have jurisdiction to determine questions of boundary between two or more states, but not jurisdiction of controversies of like character between the United States and a state.”). Suits by the United States against a state do not denigrate the dignity and respect owed the states in the way that suits by individuals do. “The submission to judicial solution of controversies arising between [the United States and a state], ‘each sovereign, with respect to the objects committed to it, and neither sovereign with respect to the objects committed to the other,’ ... but both subject to the supreme law of the land, does no violence to the inherent nature of sovereignty.” United States v. Texas, 143 U.S. 621, 646, 12 S.Ct. 488, 36 L.Ed. 285 (quoting McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 316, 410, 4 L.Ed. 579 (1819)). The possibility of suits by the United States against the states is essential to our federal system. Early on, the framers recognized that the power to enforce federal law against the states would be vital to the Union’s stability. See Ralph Ketcham, James Madison: A Biography 113 (1971) (“[A]fter but twelve days of government under the Articles [of Confederation], Madison proposed an amendment containing fateful language: 1... a general and implied power is vested in the United States in Congress assembled to enforce and carry into effect all the articles of the said Confederation against any of the States which shall refuse or neglect to abide by such determinations.’”). Justice Story regarded federal jurisdiction over suits to which the United States are a party as an absolute necessity: “Unless this power were given to the United States, the enforcement of all their rights, powers, contracts and privileges in their sovereign capacity would be at the mercy of the states.” Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States § 1674, at 445 (1851); see also United States v. Texas, 143 U.S. at 645, 12 S.Ct. 488 (lack of federal jurisdiction over controversies between the United States and a state could jeopardize the “permanence of the Union”). The Supreme Court has consistently recognized that federal supremacy in areas allotted to the national government was implied in the abandonment of the pre-constitutional federation of states. See Blatchford v. Native Village of Noatak, 501 U.S. 775, 785, 111 S.Ct. 2578, 115 L.Ed.2d 686 (1991) (states’ consent to suit by the United States is “inherent in the [Constitutional] convention”); Principality of Monaco v. Mississippi, 292 U.S. 313, 329, 54 S.Ct. 745, 78 L.Ed. 1282 (1934) (“While ... jurisdiction over suits [by the United States against a state] is not conferred by the Constitution in express words, it is inherent in the constitutional plan.”); United States v. Texas, 143 U.S. 621, 646, 12 S.Ct. 488, 36 L.Ed. 285 (1892) (consent to suit by the United States “was given by Texas when admitted into the Union upon an equal footing in all respects with the other states”).
The federal government’s power to sue a state is a narrow and nontransferable exception to the broad and fundamental constitutional principle of state sovereign immunity embodied in the Eleventh Amendment. The Supreme Court has rejected the argument that the federal government may delegate its authority to sue the states in federal court. In Blatchford v. Native Village of Noatak, 501 U.S. 775, 111 S.Ct. 2578, 115 L.Ed.2d 686 (1991), the Court indicated its disapproval of an Indian tribe’s attempt to circumvent the requirements of the Eleventh Amendment by arguing that it could sue a state based on a delegation to it of the federal government’s power to do so: [0]ur cases require Congress’ exercise of the power to abrogate state sovereign immunity, where it exists, to be exercised with unmistakable clarity. To avoid that difficulty, respondent asserts that § 1362 represents not an abrogation of the State’s sovereign immunity, but rather a delegation to tribes of the Federal Government’s exemption from state sovereign immunity. We doubt, to begin with, that that sovereign exemption can be delegated — even if one limits the permissibility of delegation (as respondents propose) to persons on whose behalf the United States itself might sue. The consent, “inherent in the convention,” to suit by the United States — at the instance and under the control of responsible federal officers — is not consent to suit by anyone whom the United States might select; and even consent to suit by the United States for a particular person’s benefit is not consent to suit by that person himself. Blatchford v. Native Village of Noatak, 501 U.S. 775, 785, 111 S.Ct. 2578, 115 L.Ed.2d 686.