Court Opinion

ID: 9940794
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-02-15 16:01:13.944181+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:45:47.199499
License: Public Domain

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                                                           [PUBLISH]
                                 In the
                 United States Court of Appeals
                        For the Eleventh Circuit

                         ____________________

                               No. 21-14409
                         ____________________

        TAQUILA MONROE,
                                                    Plaintiff-Appellant,
        versus
        FORT VALLEY STATE UNIVERSITY,

                                                            Defendant,

        BOARD OF REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY
        SYSTEM OF GEORGIA,

                                                  Defendant-Appellee

                         ____________________
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        2                         Opinion of the Court                     21-14409

                    Appeal from the United States District Court
                        for the Middle District of Georgia
                       D.C. Docket No. 5:21-cv-00089-MTT
                             ____________________

        Before BRANCH, BRASHER, and ED CARNES, Circuit Judges.
        ED CARNES, Circuit Judge:
               This appeal requires us to determine whether Congress ab-
        rogated sovereign immunity for lawsuits against States under the
        anti-retaliation provision of the False Claims Act (FCA), 31 U.S.C.
        § 3730(h). And whether the Board of Regents of the University
        System of Georgia is an arm of the State entitled to the same im-
        munity the State would have. Because Congress didn’t abrogate
        sovereign immunity under that provision, and the Board is an arm
        of the State, the district court correctly granted the Board’s motion
        to dismiss the plaintiff’s complaint.
                                              I.
               Taquila Monroe was hired in August 2020 to serve as the
        Program Director for Fort Valley State University’s Head Start and
        Early Head Start department, and she reported to the executive di-
        rector of that department. 1 About five months after she was hired,
        Monroe was terminated. She filed a lawsuit against the Board,

        1 Head Start is a federal program designed “to promote the school readiness of

        low-income children by enhancing their cognitive, social, and emotional de-
        velopment.” 42 U.S.C. § 9831.
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        21-14409                   Opinion of the Court                                3

        asserting claims under the Georgia Whistleblower Act, Ga. Code
        Ann. § 45-1-4, and the FCA’s anti-retaliation provision, 31 U.S.C.
        § 3730(h)(1). 2
                Monroe’s amended complaint (the operative one) alleges
        that Fort Valley receives millions of dollars annually from the U.S.
        Department of Health and Human Services to fund Early Head
        Start services for children up to the age of three and Head Start
        services for children ages three to five. 3 The university’s Head
        Start programs are also “partly supported by matching funds from
        the State of Georgia.” Fort Valley uses those federal and state mon-
        ies to deliver resources and services to local providers. Those local
        providers are called “subrecipients,” and they run Head Start pro-
        grams in their communities.
              Monroe alleges that she “discovered pervasive, systematic
        problems in the structure of” Fort Valley’s Head Start programs
        and that her attempts to “implement reforms” were “rebuffed” by
        her boss, the executive director of the programs. She asserts that

        2 Monroe initially sued both Fort Valley and the Board, but the district court

        dismissed Fort Valley because a member institution of the State of Georgia’s
        university system “is not a separate or distinct legal entity from the Board and,
        therefore, cannot sue or be sued in its own capacity.” See Bd. of Regents of the
        Univ. Sys. of Ga. v. Doe, 630 S.E.2d 85, 87 (Ga. Ct. App. 2006). Monroe does not
        challenge that decision, and Fort Valley is not a party to this appeal.
        3 When reviewing the grant of a motion to dismiss, we take the factual allega-

        tions in the complaint as true and construe them in the light most favorable to
        the plaintiff. See Edwards v. Prime, Inc., 602 F.3d 1276, 1291 (11th Cir. 2010).
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        4                      Opinion of the Court                21-14409

        Fort Valley misallocates Head Start funds and mismanages the
        Head Start programs in ways that make them non-compliant with
        federal standards. Monroe specifically alleges that Fort Valley has
        been guilty of: overspending on the costs of “developing and ad-
        ministering” Head Start grants; allocating Head Start funds to an
        employee primarily engaged in unrelated projects; using grant
        funds to pay down debts; improperly serving as both a grantee of
        the programs and a subrecipient of their benefits; excluding the
        Head Start policy council (comprised of parents and community
        leaders) from program decision-making; disregarding qualification
        requirements for subrecipients’ teachers; and refusing to imple-
        ment required protocols for monitoring subrecipient performance.
               Monroe claims that she was fired because she reported those
        alleged improprieties to the executive director. Fort Valley sent
        Monroe a termination letter stating that her actions “were not
        properly vetted to ensure that the Head Start and Early Head Start
        programs [were] continuing to operate within the established [Fort
        Valley] system.”
               Monroe filed suit under state law and the FCA’s anti-retalia-
        tion provision, which provides relief to an employee discharged be-
        cause of efforts to stop the presentment of false claims to the fed-
        eral government. See 31 U.S.C. § 3730(h). The Board filed a mo-
        tion to dismiss her complaint. The district court decided that the
        FCA’s anti-retaliation provision permits lawsuits against States.
        But the court also decided that Congress did not unequivocally ab-
        rogate the Eleventh Amendment sovereign immunity of States
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        21-14409                Opinion of the Court                           5

        from suits brought under that provision. Finally, the court decided
        that because the Board of Regents is an arm of the State, the Elev-
        enth Amendment shields it from liability on Monroe’s FCA and
        Georgia Whistleblower Act claims. We agree.
                                           II.
                Whether the Georgia Board of Regents is an entity that can
        be sued under the anti-retaliation provision of the FCA is a matter
        of statutory interpretation. Whether the Board has sovereign im-
        munity from Monroe’s lawsuit is a jurisdictional matter. The dis-
        trict court ruled on both issues.
               We are generally required to address jurisdiction as a thresh-
        old issue before reaching the merits of a case. See Steel Co. v. Citizens
        for a Better Env’t, 523 U.S. 83, 93–102 (1998) (rejecting view that
        courts may decline to address questions of jurisdiction and proceed
        to more easily resolvable questions of merits); Gardner v. Mutz, 962
        F.3d 1329, 1339 (11th Cir. 2020) (“[T]he Supreme Court has ex-
        pressly condemned the exercise of a so-called ‘“hypothetical juris-
        diction” that enables a court to resolve contested questions of law
        when its jurisdiction is in doubt.’”) (quoting Steel Co., 523 U.S. at
        101). But the Supreme Court has said that there are circumstances
        in which it is “possible, and indeed appropriate, to decide the stat-
        utory issue” of whether a party is subject to suit under a statute
        before deciding the jurisdictional issue of sovereign immunity. Vt.
        Agency of Nat. Res. v. United States ex rel. Stevens, 529 U.S. 765, 780
        (2000). For reasons we will explain, it is unnecessary for us to
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        6                       Opinion of the Court                  21-14409

        decide in this case the answer to the first issue, the statutory inter-
        pretation one.
                The district court decided as a matter of statutory interpre-
        tation that the FCA’s anti-retaliation provision allows for suit
        against the Board. The Board has not challenged that decision be-
        fore us. It didn’t raise the issue in its brief. The Board’s counsel
        acknowledged that it could prevail in the appeal by winning on ei-
        ther of the two issues but the clearest way was with the Eleventh
        Amendment non-abrogation issue. By failing to raise the statutory
        issue before this Court, the Board has, for purposes of this appeal,
        “abandoned any argument” that it is not subject to suit under the
        terms of the anti-retaliation provision of the FCA. Sapuppo v. All-
        state Floridian Ins. Co., 739 F.3d 678, 680 (11th Cir. 2014); see In re
        Blue Cross Blue Shield Antitrust Litig. MDL 2406, 85 F.4th 1070, 1092
        (11th Cir. 2023) (“We will not consider issues that a party fails to
        brief adequately.”); Regions Bank v. Legal Outsource PA, 936 F.3d
        1184, 1189 (11th Cir. 2019) (“[The defendants] have failed to argue
        or cite caselaw [in support of a position . . .], so we consider that
        issue abandoned.”); United States v. Willis, 649 F.3d 1248, 1254 (11th
        Cir. 2011) (“A party seeking to raise a claim or issue on appeal must
        plainly and prominently so indicate. . . . Where a party fails to abide
        by this simple requirement, he has waived his right to have the
        court consider that argument.”) (alteration adopted) (quotation
        marks omitted); Access Now, Inc. v. Sw. Airlines Co., 385 F.3d 1324,
        1330 (11th Cir. 2004) (“Any issue that an appellant wants the Court
        to address should be specifically and clearly identified in the brief. .
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        21-14409                Opinion of the Court                           7

        . . Otherwise, the issue — even if properly preserved at trial — will
        be considered abandoned. . . .”) (quotation marks omitted).
               We do not express or imply any view on whether the FCA’s
        anti-retaliation provision provides a private cause of action against
        a state agency in the circumstances of this case. We do hold that
        the Board has forfeited that issue by not raising it before us. We
        turn to the Eleventh Amendment sovereign immunity issue, which
        the parties have raised and argued to us.
                                          III.
               The Eleventh Amendment provides: “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.” U.S. Const. amend. XI. It “largely shields states
        from suit in federal courts without their consent, leaving parties
        with claims against a State to present them, if the State permits, in
        the State’s own tribunals.” United States ex rel. Lesinski v. S. Fla. Wa-
        ter Mgmt. Dist., 739 F.3d 598, 601 (11th Cir. 2014) (quotation marks
        omitted). But Eleventh Amendment immunity doesn’t apply, even
        to unconsenting States, if Congress has abrogated the immunity
        pursuant to a valid exercise of its power. Seminole Tribe of Fla. v.
        Florida, 517 U.S. 44, 55 (1996).
               “To temper Congress’ acknowledged powers of abrogation
        with due concern for the Eleventh Amendment’s role as an essen-
        tial component of our constitutional structure,” the Supreme
        Court has “applied a simple but stringent test: Congress may
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        8                       Opinion of the Court                 21-14409

        abrogate the States’ constitutionally secured immunity from suit in
        federal court only by making its intention unmistakably clear in the
        language of the statute.” Dellmuth v. Muth, 491 U.S. 223, 227–28
        (1989) (quotation marks omitted). Because it is “incumbent upon
        the federal courts to be certain of Congress’ intent before finding
        that federal law overrides the guarantees of the Eleventh Amend-
        ment,” Congress must “unequivocally express this intention in the
        statutory language.” Atascadero State Hosp. v. Scanlon, 473 U.S. 234,
        243 (1985), superseded by statute on other grounds, Rehabilitation Act
        Amendments of 1986, Pub. L. No. 99-506, § 1003, 100 Stat. 1807,
        1845. Which is to say, if Congress “chooses to subject the States to
        federal jurisdiction, it must do so specifically,” because “[a] general
        authorization for suit in federal court is not the kind of unequivocal
        statutory language sufficient to abrogate the Eleventh Amend-
        ment.” Id. at 246; see Seminole Tribe of Fla. v. Florida, 11 F.3d 1016,
        1024 (11th Cir. 1994), aff’d, 517 U.S. 44 (1996). Authorizing a law-
        suit generally is not tantamount to specifically authorizing a law-
        suit against a State in federal court.
               Monroe contends that the FCA’s anti-retaliation provision,
        31 U.S.C. § 3730(h)(1), contains an unequivocal abrogation of sov-
        ereign immunity. This is what that provision says:
               Any employee, contractor, or agent shall be entitled
               to all relief necessary to make that employee, contrac-
               tor, or agent whole, if that employee, contractor, or
               agent is discharged, demoted, suspended, threatened,
               harassed, or in any other manner discriminated
               against in the terms and conditions of employment
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        21-14409                  Opinion of the Court                      9

              because of lawful acts done by the employee, contrac-
              tor, agent or associated others in furtherance of an
              action under this section or other eﬀorts to stop 1 or
              more violations of this subchapter.
        31 U.S.C. § 3730(h)(1).
                There is no “unmistakably clear” abrogation of State sover-
        eign immunity here. Dellmuth, 491 U.S. at 228 (quotation marks
        omitted). Like the statute at issue in Dellmuth, the FCA’s anti-retal-
        iation provision does not mention the Eleventh Amendment. It
        does not mention the States. It does not mention abrogation. And
        it does not mention who may be sued for violating it. See id. at 231
        (concluding that a statute did not abrogate sovereign immunity be-
        cause it included “no reference whatsoever to either the Eleventh
        Amendment or the States’ sovereign immunity,” did not “address
        abrogation in even oblique terms,” and did not “speak to what par-
        ties are subject to suit”). The FCA’s anti-retaliation provision al-
        lows “[a]ny employee, contractor, or agent” to seek relief in federal
        court, but it doesn’t say that a State may be ordered to provide that
        relief. 31 U.S.C. § 3730(h)(1). Instead, the provision provides only
        “[a] general authorization for suit in federal court.” Dellmuth, 491
        U.S. at 231 (quotation marks omitted); see also Atascadero, 473 U.S.
        at 245–46 (concluding that the statute allowing for recovery against
        “any recipient of Federal assistance” did not abrogate sovereign im-
        munity though it was undisputed that the defendant State fit into
        that category) (quoting 29 U.S.C. § 794a(a)(2)). The FCA’s anti-re-
        taliation provision falls short of an unequivocal expression of intent
        to subject States to suit. See Atascadero, 473 U.S. at 243.
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        10                     Opinion of the Court                  21-14409

               Faced with the absence of statutory language to support her
        position, Monroe invents language as she walks us through amend-
        ments to the statute. The previous version of the anti-retaliation
        provision enacted in 1986 stated in relevant part:
              Any employee who is discharged, demoted, sus-
              pended, threatened, harassed, or in any other manner
              discriminated against in the terms and conditions of
              employment by his or her employer because of lawful
              acts done by the employee on behalf of the employee
              or others in furtherance of an action under this sec-
              tion, including investigation for, initiation of, testi-
              mony for, or assistance in an action ﬁled or to be ﬁled
              under this section, shall be entitled to all relief neces-
              sary to make the employee whole.
        31 U.S.C. § 3730(h) (1986) (emphasis added); see also False Claims
        Amendments Act of 1986, Pub. L. No. 99-562, § 4, 100 Stat. 3153,
        3157–58. Monroe points out that in 2009 Congress amended the
        statute to remove the words “by his or her employer.” See 31 U.S.C.
        § 3730(h)(1); Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009, Pub. L.
        No. 111-21, § 4(d), 123 Stat. 1617, 1624–25. She also considers it
        signiﬁcant that, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2000 holding
        in Vermont Agency that the deﬁnition of “person” in the qui tam lia-
        bility provision of the FCA does not encompass the sovereign, see
        529 U.S. at 780–87, Congress elected not to include “person” in the
        revised version of § 3730(h). In Monroe’s view, we can infer an in-
        tent to allow suits against States from Congress’ removal of the
        words “his or her employer” and failure to replace them with the
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        21-14409                Opinion of the Court                          11

        word “person,” which the Supreme Court had established was in-
        suﬃcient to abrogate sovereign immunity.
               That’s not how Eleventh Amendment abrogation works. In-
        ferences aren’t enough. Our basis for ﬁnding an abrogation must
        be “textual,” Dellmuth, 491 U.S. at 230, “speciﬁc[],” Atascadero, 473
        U.S. at 246, and grounded “only [in] the clearest indications” from
        Congress, id. at 243. Not implied, general, and ambiguous. Mon-
        roe cites no case (and we have found none) where a court held that
        Congress abrogated sovereign immunity merely by omitting a
        word that isn’t sufficient to abrogate immunity without adding
        words that are sufficient.
                 The non-vacated decisions she cites where Congress abro-
        gated the Eleventh Amendment’s protections — including cases
        where courts considered amendments to the statutes at issue — are
        easily distinguishable based on the statutes’ use of the term “State”
        or terms synonymous with States or state entities. See Kimel v. Fla.
        Bd. of Regents, 528 U.S. 62, 68, 73–74 (2000) (concluding that Age
        Discrimination in Employment Act, 29 U.S.C. § 621, abrogated sov-
        ereign immunity where it incorporated by reference a statute
        amended to permit actions “against any employer (including a pub-
        lic agency)”) (quoting 29 U.S.C. § 216(b)); Seminole Tribe, 517 U.S.
        at 57 (concluding that “numerous references to the ‘State’ in the
        text of § 2710(d)(7)(B) ma[d]e it indubitable that Congress intended
        through the Act to abrogate the States’ sovereign immunity”); A.W.
        v. Jersey City Pub. Schs., 341 F.3d 234, 238, 242–50 (3d Cir. 2003) (con-
        cluding that “Congress unequivocally expressed its intent to
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        12                     Opinion of the Court                21-14409

        condition participation in . . . two federal assistance programs on
        the state’s relinquishment of its immunity” where statutes explic-
        itly stated that State would not be immune under the Eleventh
        Amendment for violations of those statutes); Bd. of Trs. of Univ. of
        Ala. v. Garrett, 531 U.S. 356, 363–64 (2001) (finding clear statement
        of intent to abrogate where statute explicitly stated that “[a] State
        shall not be immune under the eleventh amendment . . . for a vio-
        lation of this chapter”) (quoting 42 U.S.C. § 12202). Nothing like
        that language appears in the anti-retaliation provision of the FCA.
               We are not alone in concluding that the anti-retaliation pro-
        vision of the FCA doesn’t abrogate sovereign immunity. Every cir-
        cuit that has addressed the issue in a published opinion has held
        that the previous version of 31 U.S.C. § 3730(h) (the one that in-
        cluded the word “employer”) did not abrogate sovereign immun-
        ity. See Wood ex rel. United States v. Am. Inst. in Taiwan, 286 F.3d
        526, 535 (D.C. Cir. 2002) (concluding that a government entity “en-
        joy[ed] sovereign immunity” in suit under § 3730(h)); United States
        v. Tex. Tech Univ., 171 F.3d 279, 294–95 (5th Cir. 1999) (concluding
        that a suit against State defendants under § 3730(h) “must be dis-
        missed” due to “Eleventh Amendment implications”); LeBlanc v.
        United States, 50 F.3d 1025, 1028–30 (Fed. Cir. 1995) (concluding
        that sovereign immunity applied where the plaintiff “ha[d] not di-
        rected us to any statutory language that even hints that Congress
        intended to subject the federal government to suit under section
        3730(h)”). Those holdings remain persuasive following Congress’
        modification of the language in § 3730(h) because, as we have ex-
        plained, the post-amendment version of the provision gives no
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        21-14409                 Opinion of the Court                          13

        more indication that States are subject to suit than the pre-amend-
        ment version did.
              Because Congress did not abrogate sovereign immunity for
        suit under 31 U.S.C. § 3730(h)(1) with unmistakable clarity, see
        Dellmuth, 491 U.S. at 228, state entities may invoke the Eleventh
        Amendment to defend against FCA anti-retaliation suits.
                                           IV.
                  Having determined that Congress did not abrogate state
        sovereign immunity under 31 U.S.C. § 3730(h)(1), we turn now to
        the issue of whether the Georgia Board of Regents is entitled to it.
        An entity is protected by a State’s Eleventh Amendment immunity
        if it is an arm of the State. See Lesinski, 739 F.3d at 602. The Board
        insists it is that. Monroe says the Board isn’t that.
               We have held the Georgia Board of Regents is an arm of the
        State entitled to sovereign immunity. See Barnes v. Zaccari, 669 F.3d
        1295, 1298, 1308–09 (11th Cir. 2012) (reversing denial of summary
        judgment to Board on sovereign immunity grounds and stating:
        “The Board is an arm of the State of Georgia.”); Williams v. Bd. of
        Regents of Univ. Sys. of Ga., 477 F.3d 1282, 1301–02 (11th Cir. 2007)
        (holding that “the Eleventh Amendment bar[red] suit against” the
        Board, which is a “state entit[y] for Eleventh Amendment pur-
        poses”); see also Lapides v. Bd. of Regents of Univ. Sys. of Ga., 535 U.S.
        613, 620 (2002) (concluding that “the State” (i.e., the Board) had
        waived Eleventh Amendment immunity by removing case to fed-
        eral court); Stroud v. McIntosh, 722 F.3d 1294, 1299 (11th Cir. 2013)
        (explaining that in Lapides, “[a] university professor sued the Board
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        14                     Opinion of the Court                 21-14409

        of Regents of the University System of Georgia (an arm of the
        state)”).
              Monroe contends that, notwithstanding that precedent, we
        must apply our usual arm-of-the-State test to determine if the
        Board was acting as a sovereign instrumentality when it performed
        (through Fort Valley) the particular functions at issue in this case.
        But nothing about Fort Valley’s administration of the Head Start
        and Early Head Start programs changes the Board’s status as an
        arm of the State of Georgia.
                This Court considers four factors to determine whether an
        entity is an arm of the State entitled to Eleventh Amendment im-
        munity: “(1) how state law defines the entity; (2) what degree of
        control the State maintains over the entity; (3) where the entity de-
        rives its funds; and (4) who is responsible for judgments against the
        entity.” Manders v. Lee, 338 F.3d 1304, 1309 (11th Cir. 2003) (en
        banc). We begin with the two factors we have identified as most
        important: how state law defines the entity, see Versiglio v. Bd. of
        Dental Exam’rs of Ala., 686 F.3d 1290, 1292 (11th Cir. 2012), and who
        is responsible for judgments against it, see Freyre v. Chronister, 910
        F.3d 1371, 1384 & n.13 (11th Cir. 2018); Rosario v. Am. Corrective
        Counseling Servs., Inc., 506 F.3d 1039, 1046 (11th Cir. 2007).
             A. How State Law Defines the Entity
              The way that state law defines the Board is important in de-
        termining its arm-of-State status. That’s “because states have ex-
        tremely wide latitude in determining their forms of government
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        21-14409                Opinion of the Court                        15

        and how state functions are performed.” Manders, 338 F.3d at 1309
        n.10.
                In Versiglio we held that a dental examiners board was an
        arm of the State of Alabama entitled to Eleventh Amendment im-
        munity. 686 F.3d at 1292–93. That decision relied on the Alabama
        Supreme Court’s determination the board was entitled to sover-
        eign immunity under the state constitution. Id. Observing that
        “[t]his court gives great deference to how state courts characterize
        the entity in question,” we declined to reach a conclusion “diamet-
        rically opposed to the findings of the highest state court to consider
        the issue.” Id.; see also McAdams v. Jeﬀerson Cnty. 911 Emergency
        Commc’ns. Dist., 931 F.3d 1132, 1134–35 (11th Cir. 2019) (rejecting
        sovereign immunity defense and relying on state supreme court de-
        cision that entity analogous to defendant was not “agency of the
        state”); Walker v. Jefferson Cnty. Bd. of Educ., 771 F.3d 748, 755–56
        (11th Cir. 2014) (relying on Alabama Supreme Court holding that
        local school boards were not arms of the State with respect to em-
        ployment decisions to reach same conclusion).
                Monroe concedes that “the Board and its aﬃliates are state
        created entities.” The Board was created by the Georgia Constitu-
        tion and holds constitutional and statutory mandates to manage
        the university system of the State of Georgia. See Ga. Const. art.
        VIII, § 4 ¶ I(b); Ga. Code Ann. § 20-3-51. Under the Georgia Con-
        stitution, “[i]t is settled that the Board is an agency of the State to
        which sovereign immunity applies.” Olvera v. Univ. Sys. of Ga.’s Bd.
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        16                      Opinion of the Court                  21-14409

        of Regents, 782 S.E.2d 436, 437 (Ga. 2016); see Versiglio, 686 F.3d at
        1292–93.
               Monroe argues that a “federally backed [Head Start/ Early
        Head Start] program” is not a state entity under state law. But she
        did not sue a federally backed “program.” She sued the Board,
        which Georgia treats as a state entity entitled to sovereign immun-
        ity. This factor strongly favors treating the Board as an arm of the
        State.
             B. Who Is Responsible for a Judgment Against the Board
                 “[W]hen the action is in essence one for the recovery of
        money from the state, the state is the real, substantial party in in-
        terest and is entitled to invoke its sovereign immunity from suit . .
        . .” Regents of Univ. of Cal. v. Doe, 519 U.S. 425, 429 (1997); see also
        Williams v. Dist. Bd. of Trs. of Edison Cmty. Coll., 421 F.3d 1190, 1194
        (11th Cir. 2005) (concluding that a community college was arm of
        the State where “the state [was] ultimately responsible for [its] lia-
        bilities”). This factor weighs in favor of applying sovereign immun-
        ity when “the state’s treasury is directly implicated.” Lesinski, 739
        F.3d at 605 (alterations adopted) (quotation marks omitted); see also
        Shands Teaching Hosp. & Clinics, Inc. v. Beech St. Corp., 208 F.3d 1308,
        1313 (11th Cir. 2000) (concluding that a third party administrator
        of state health care services program was state entity where a judg-
        ment against it “would implicate state funds”).
               The Board insists that no entity other than the State of Geor-
        gia could be held liable for a judgment against the state agency that
        is constitutionally and statutorily responsible for managing
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        21-14409                  Opinion of the Court                            17

        Georgia’s university system. Monroe admits that the Board “gets
        some traction” on this argument. More accurately, with this argu-
        ment the Board is on solid ground. It is the only remaining defend-
        ant in this suit. Its funding derives from the state legislature. See
        Ga. Const. art. VIII, § 4 ¶ I(c). And a judgment would have to be
        paid out of State funds.
                 Monroe asserts that discovery is appropriate to determine
        whether the Board has liability coverage to protect against adverse
        judgments. But the availability of liability insurance does not make
        the Board less of a state entity for sovereign immunity purposes.
        The Supreme Court has rejected the argument that a State’s pur-
        chase of insurance to protect itself from liability diminishes its
        claim to sovereign immunity, explaining: “[I]t is the entity’s poten-
        tial legal liability, rather than its ability or inability to require a third
        party to reimburse it, or to discharge the liability in the first in-
        stance, that is relevant.” See Regents of Univ. of Cal., 519 U.S. at 431;
        see also Lesinski, 739 F.3d at 605 (rejecting argument that existence
        of self-insurance fund ensuring that defendant entity and not the
        State would be liable for a judgment was “determinative of the [en-
        tity’s] status as an arm of the state”).
               The State of Georgia is responsible for judgments against
        the Board of Regents, and state law deﬁnes it as an arm of the State.
        Thus, the two most important factors favor immunity. We now
        turn to the remaining two factors: the degree of control the State
        exercises over the Board and the Board’s source of funding.
           C. Degree of State Control
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        18                      Opinion of the Court                  21-14409

                The degree of control that Georgia exercises over the Board
        “must be assessed in light of the particular function in which the
        [Board] was engaged when taking the actions out of which liability
        is asserted to arise.” Manders, 338 F.3d at 1308; see also Lesinski, 739
        F.3d at 603.
                Monroe and the Board disagree on how to define the
        Board’s “particular function[s]” in the context of this case. See Man-
        ders, 338 F.3d at 1308. Monroe encourages us to define the Board’s
        relevant functions narrowly, focusing on Fort Valley’s administra-
        tion of the Head Start and Early Head Start programs. While ac-
        knowledging that the Board is an arm of the State in other capaci-
        ties, she contends that the State maintains minimal control over the
        administration of the Head Start programs. She argues that the
        programs are federally regulated and that their administration “de-
        rives from federal (not State) policy.” The Board, by contrast, de-
        ﬁnes its relevant function more generally by pointing to its consti-
        tutional mandate to govern the State’s university system.
               Lesinski featured a similar dispute on comparable facts: a
        state-created entity sought federal funds from a federal program,
        which led to a lawsuit under the FCA. 739 F.3d at 600–01. The
        state entity in that case was a Florida water management district
        that had requested reimbursement from the Federal Emergency
        Management Agency for post-hurricane repairs. Id. We concluded
        that the district was an arm of the State that was immune from an
        FCA action challenging its solicitation of those federal funds. Id. at
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        600. 4 The parties disagreed on how to articulate the “particular
        function at issue” when debating the state-control factor: either the
        district’s solicitation of public grants specifically, or its mission of
        water management generally. 739 F.3d at 603. We declined to en-
        dorse either position and explained that the parties’ “abstraction ar-
        gument stray[ed] from the ‘key question’ of the Manders function-
        by-function inquiry, which is not what powers state entities have,
        but for whom they exercise that power.’” Id. at 604 (alterations
        adopted) (quotation marks omitted). In Lesinski the state-control
        factor favored immunity because, however its applicable powers
        were defined, “the District derive[d] both the authority and the ob-
        ligation to exercise those powers directly from the State.” Id.
               The answer to that “key question” in Lesinski compels us to
        conclude here that the Board is acting for the State of Georgia.
        When the Board procures and uses federal grant money to help
        Georgia children, it is exercising a welfare power on behalf of the
        State. In administering the Head Start programs, the Board may
        be acting in part on behalf of the federal government, but only in
        part.
                Not only that, but the administrators of Fort Valley made an
        official decision to participate in those federal programs. Those de-
        cisionmakers were elected or appointed by the Board, see Ga. Code

        4 Lesinski was interpreting 31 U.S.C. § 3729(a) of the FCA instead of considering

        the applicability of sovereign immunity, but it used the same arm-of-the-State
        analysis applicable to the Eleventh Amendment. See 739 F.3d at 601–02 (citing
        Vermont Agency, 529 U.S. at 779–80).
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        20                         Opinion of the Court                       21-14409

        Ann. § 20-3-31(2), which is comprised of members from across the
        State of Georgia who were appointed by its governor and con-
        firmed by its senate, Ga. Const. art. VIII, § 4 ¶ I(a); Ga. Code Ann.
        § 20-3-21; see also Manders, 338 F.3d at 1319 n.35 (noting that when
        “the State delegates and performs certain . . . functions through”
        an entity, that entity “act[s] for and represent[s] the State in those
        assigned tasks”). And participation in the Head Start programs is
        entirely consistent with the Board’s core state duties, which include
        “establish[ing] all such schools of learning or art as may be useful
        to the state and . . . organiz[ing] them in the way most likely to
        attain the ends desired.” Ga. Code Ann. § 20-3-31(3).
               The State exercises sufficient control over the university sys-
        tem, including the employees at Fort Valley applying for federal
        grants to help Georgia’s children, to weigh this factor in favor of
        sovereign immunity. See Lesinski, 739 F.3d at 603–04; Williams, 421
        F.3d at 1193 (concluding that a state community college was enti-
        tled to sovereign immunity in a suit based on an alleged violation
        of students’ privacy rights due to sending grades by email where
        the State of Florida “maintain[ed] substantial control over its edu-
        cational system, including community colleges”). 5

        5 Monroe urges a narrow definition of the Board’s relevant functions, but the

        decisions she relies on feature an entirely different issue: whether an entity or
        official is more like a State, which is entitled to sovereign immunity, or more
        like a county or similar municipal entity, which is not. See Freyre, 910 F.3d at
        1380 (explaining that a law enforcement officer “is entitled to Eleventh
        Amendment immunity if he is acting as an arm of the state but not if he is
        acting as an arm of the county”) (quotation marks omitted); Abusaid v.
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            D. Where Entity Derives its Funds
                If “state funds are involved to some extent in the particular
        functions . . . at issue,” that is “sufficient to tilt the [source of funds]
        factor of the Eleventh Amendment analysis toward immunity”
        even if some other entity “bears the major burden of funding.”
        Manders, 338 F.3d at 1323–24; see also Lesinski, 739 F.3d at 604–05
        (concluding that water management district was not “strip[ped] . . .
        of its insulation from suit in a federal forum” where the State “pro-
        vide[d] a significant, albeit fluctuating, portion of the District’s
        funding”) (footnote omitted); Williams, 421 F.3d at 1194 (conclud-
        ing that community college was arm of the State, explaining that
        “[a]lthough [it was] not exclusively funded by the state, state ap-
        proval of institutional budgets evidences state control”).

        Hillsborough Cnty. Bd. of Cnty. Comm’rs, 405 F.3d 1298, 1317 (11th Cir. 2005)
        (concluding that sheriff was not acting as an arm of State when enforcing
        county ordinance); Manders, 338 F.3d at 1318–29 (comparing roles of State and
        county in the function at issue and concluding that sheriff was “an arm of the
        State, not [the] County,”); see also McAdams, 931 F.3d at 1135–36 (concluding
        that a county’s 911 emergency communications district was not an arm of
        State entitled to sovereign immunity).
        These cases have little, if any, persuasive value on the question of how to de-
        fine the Board’s function here. Monroe does not argue that the Board is like a
        county or other political subdivision, and her allegation that Fort Valley oper-
        ated the Head Start programs in eight different Georgia counties would refute
        that characterization anyway. Instead, Monroe focuses on the Board’s partic-
        ipation in federal programs. But as we have discussed, see infra Part IV.C, even
        when it accepts federal funds, the Board is acting on behalf of the State of
        Georgia.
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        22                           Opinion of the Court                           21-14409

                Although Monroe emphasizes the federal funding of Head
        Start programs, her own amended complaint alleges that the Head
        Start grant “is partly supported by matching funds from the State
        of Georgia.” By law, it must be; the federal government cannot
        provide more than eighty percent of the costs. See 42 U.S.C. §
        9835(b). And the Board itself is funded by appropriations from the
        Georgia legislature. Ga. Const. art. VIII, § 4, ¶ I(c); Ga. Code Ann.
        § 20-3-53. The involvement of state funds in the function at issue
        pushes this factor onto the side of sovereign immunity. See Man-
        ders, 338 F.3d at 1323–24; Lesinski, 739 F.3d at 604–05; Williams, 421
        F.3d at 1194. 6
               Individually and collectively, the Manders factors weigh
        heavily in favor of treating the Georgia Board of Regents as an arm

        6 Monroe relies on out-of-circuit decisions in which self-funded organizations

        that engaged in commercial activity were found not to be arms of the State.
        See United States ex rel. Oberg v. Pa. Higher Educ. Assistance Agency, 804 F.3d 646,
        650, 658, 669, 676 (4th Cir. 2015) (concluding that a provider of student aid
        services established by the State of Pennsylvania was not an arm of State
        where it “support[ed] itself” through “significant revenues generated by its ex-
        tensive commercial activities”); United States ex rel. Sikkenga v. Regence Bluecross
        Blueshield of Utah, 472 F.3d 702, 718–19, 721 (10th Cir. 2006) (concluding that
        an organization of pathologists owned by a corporation that was itself owned
        by a state university was not an arm of State of Utah where it “was designed
        to be not only self-sustaining, but a commercial ‘profit center’”), abrogated on
        other grounds by Cochise Consultancy, Inc. v. United States ex rel. Hunt, 587 U.S. ----,
        139 S. Ct. 1507 (2019). Those two decisions have little bearing on the question
        of whether the Board, which relies on some funding from the State of Georgia
        to provide non-profit educational services, is an arm of the State for purposes
        of this lawsuit.
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        21-14409              Opinion of the Court                     23

        of the State for Eleventh Amendment purposes. Consistent with
        our precedent, we hold that the Board is entitled to sovereign im-
        munity.
              AFFIRMED.