Court Opinion

ID: 9427488
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:20:56.664414+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:07.492837
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Blackmun,
with whom The Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Rehnquist join, dissenting.
The Court, in a plausible opinion, holds that the State of Nevada is subject to an unconsented suit in a California state court for damages in tort. This result at first glance does not seem too unreasonable. One might well ask why Nevada, even though it is a State, and even though it has not given its consent, should not be responsible for the wrong its servant perpetrated on a California highway. And one might also inquire how it is that, if no provision of our national Constitution specifically prevents the nonimmunity result, these tort action plaintiffs could be denied their judgment.
But the Court paints with a very broad brush, and I am troubled by the implications of its holding. Despite a fragile footnote disclaimer, ante, at 424 n. 24, the Court’s basic and undeniable ruling is that what we have always thought of as a “sovereign State” is now to be treated in the courts of a sister State, once jurisdiction is obtained, just as any other litigant. I fear the ultimate consequences of that holding, and I suspect that the Court has opened the door to avenues of liability and interstate retaliation that will prove unsettling and upsetting for our federal system. Accordingly, I dissent.
It is important to note that at the time of the Constitutional Convention, as the Court concedes, there was “widespread acceptance of the view that a sovereign State is never amenable to suit without its consent.” Ante, at 420. The Court also acknowledges that “the notion that immunity from suit is an attribute of sovereignty is reflected in our cases.” Ante, at 415. Despite these concessions, the Court holds that the sovereign-immunity doctrine is a mere matter of “comity” *428which a State is free to reject whenever its “policy” so dictates. Ante, at 426.
There is no limit to the breadth of the Court’s rationale, which goes beyond the approach taken by the California Court of Appeal in this case. That court theorized that Nevada was not “sovereign” for purposes of this case because sovereignty ended at the California-Nevada line: “ ‘When the sister state enters into activities in this state, it is not exercising sovereign power over the citizens of this state and is not entitled to the benefits of the sovereign immunity doctrine as to those activities unless this state has conferred immunity by law or as a matter of comity.’ ” Hall v. University of Nevada, 74 Cal. App. 3d 280, 284, 141 Cal. Rptr. 439, 441 (1977), quoting Hall v. University of Nevada, 8 Cal. 3d 522, 524, 503 P. 2d 1363, 1364 (1972), cert. denied, 414 U. S. 820 (1973). The California court, in other words, recognized that sovereign States are immune from unconsented suit; it held only that this rule failed in its application on the facts because Nevada was not a “sovereign” when its agent entered California and committed a tort there. Indeed, the court said flatly that “ ‘state sovereignty ends at the state boundary,’ ” 74 Cal. App. 3d, at 284, 141 Cal. Rptr., at 441, again quoting Hall, 8 Cal. 3d, at 525, 503 P. 2d, at 1365.
That reasoning finds no place in this Court’s opinion. Rather, the Court assumes that Nevada is “sovereign,” but then concludes that the sovereign-immunity doctrine has no constitutional source. Thus, it says, California can abolish the doctrine at will. By this reasoning, Nevada’s amenability to suit in California is not conditioned on its agent’s having committed a tortious act in California. Since the Court finds no constitutional source for the sovereign-immunity doctrine, California, so far as the Federal Constitution is concerned, is able and free to treat Nevada, and any other State, just as it would treat any other litigant. The Court’s theory means that State A constitutionally can be sued by an individual in *429the courts of State B on any cause of action, provided only that the plaintiff in State B obtains jurisdiction over State A consistently with the Due Process Clause.
The Court, by its footnote 24, ante, at 424, purports to confine its holding to traffic-accident torts committed outside the defendant State, and perhaps even to traffic “policies.” Such facts, however, play absolutely no part in the reasoning by which the Court reaches its conclusion. The Court says merely that “California has ‘declared its will’; it has adopted as its policy full compensation in its courts for injuries on its highways .... Nothing in the Federal Constitution authorizes or obligates this Court to frustrate that policy.” Ante, at 426. There is no suggestion in this language that, if California had adopted some other policy; in some other area of the law, the result would be any different. If, indeed, there is “[njothing in the Federal Constitution” that allows frustration of California’s policy, it is hard to see just how the Court could use a different analysis or reach a different result in a different case.
The Court’s expansive logic and broad holding — that so far as the Constitution is concerned, State A can be sued in State B on the same terms any other litigant can be sued— will place severe strains on our system of cooperative federalism. States in all likelihood will retaliate against one another for respectively abolishing the “sovereign immunity” doctrine. States’ legal officers will be required to defend suits in all other States. States probably will decide to modify their tax-collection and revenue systems in order to avoid the collection of judgments. In this very case, for example, Nevada evidently maintains cash balances in California banks to facilitate the collection of sales taxes from California corporations doing business in Nevada. Pet. for Cert. 5. Under the Court’s decision, Nevada will have strong incentive to withdraw those balances and place them in Nevada banks so as to insulate itself from California judgments. If respond*430ents were forced to seek satisfaction of their judgment in Nevada, that State, of course, might endeavor to refuse to enforce that judgment, or enforce it only on Nevada’s terms. The Court’s decision, thus, may force radical changes in the way States do business with one another, and it imposes, as well, financial and administrative burdens on the States themselves.
I must agree with the Court that if the judgment of the California Court of Appeal is to be reversed, a constitutional source for Nevada’s sovereign immunity must be found. I would find that source not in an express provision of the Constitution but in a guarantee that is implied as an essential component of federalism. The Court has had no difficulty in implying the guarantee of freedom of association in the First Amendment, NAACP v. Button, 371 U. S. 415, 430-431 (1963); Kusper v. Pontikes, 414 U. S. 51, 56-57 (1973), and it has had no difficulty in implying a right of interstate travel, Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U. S. 618 (1969); United States v. Guest, 383 U. S. 745 (1966). In the latter case, the Court observed, id., at 757: “The constitutional right to travel from one State to another . . . occupies a position fundamental to the concept of our Federal Union.” And although the right of interstate travel “finds no explicit mention in the Constitution,” the reason, “it has been suggested, is that a right so elementary was conceived from the beginning to be a necessary concomitant of the stronger Union the Constitution created.” Id., at 758. Accordingly, the Court acknowledged the existence of this constitutional right without finding it necessary “to ascribe the source of this right ... to a particular constitutional provision.” Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U. S., at 630.
I have no difficulty in accepting the same argument for the existence of a constitutional doctrine of interstate sovereign immunity. The Court’s acknowledgment, referred to above, that the Framers must have assumed that States were immune *431from suit in the courts of their sister States lends substantial support. The only reason why this immunity did not receive specific mention is that it was too obvious to deserve mention. The prompt passage of the Eleventh Amendment nullifying the decision in Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 Dall. 419 (1793), is surely significant. If the Framers were indeed concerned lest the States be haled before the federal courts — as the courts of a “ ‘higher’ sovereign,” ante, at 418 — how much more must they have reprehended the notion of a State’s being haled before the courts of a sister State. The concept of sovereign immunity prevailed at the time of the Constitutional Convention. It is, for me, sufficiently fundamental to our federal structure to have implicit constitutional dimension. Indeed, if the Court means what it implies in its footnote 24 — that some state policies might require a different result — it must be suggesting that there are some federalism constraints on a State’s amenability to suit in the courts of another State. If that is so, the only question is whether the facts of this case are sufficient to call the implicit constitutional right of sovereign immunity into play here. I would answer that question in the affirmative.
Finally, it strikes me as somewhat curious that the Court relegates to a passing footnote reference what apparently is the only other appellate litigation in which the precise question presented here was considered and, indeed, in which the Court’s result was rejected. Paulus v. South Dakota, 52 N. D. 84, 201 N. W. 867 (1924); Paulus v. South Dakota, 58 N. D. 643, 227 N. W. 52 (1929). The plaintiff there was injured in a coal mine operated in North Dakota by the State of South Dakota. He sued South Dakota in a North Dakota state court. The Supreme Court of North Dakota rejected the plaintiff’s contention that South Dakota “discards its sovereignty when it crosses the boundary line.” 52 N. D., at 92, 201 N. W., at 870. It held that South Dakota was immune from suit in the North Dakota courts; *432“Therefore, in the absence of allegations as to the law of the sister state showing a consent to be sued, the courts of this state must necessarily regard a sovereign sister state as immune to the same extent that this state would be immune in the absence of a consenting statute.” 58 N. D., at 647, 227 N. W., at 54. The court noted that under the Eleventh Amendment no State could be sued in federal court by a citizen of another State. “Much less,” the court reasoned, “would it be consistent with any sound conception of sovereignty that a state might be haled into the courts of a sister sovereign state at the will or behest of citizens or residents of the latter.” Id., at 649, 227 N. W., at 55. The Supreme Court of California purported to distinguish Paulus (citing only the first opinion in that litigation) on the ground that “the plaintiff was a citizen of South Dakota.” Hall v. University of Nevada, 8 Cal. 3d, at 525, 503 P. 2d, at 1365. That court, however, made no reference to the Supreme Court of North Dakota’s second opinion and thus passed over the fact that the plaintiff had amended his complaint to allege that he was a resident of North Dakota. The North Dakota Supreme Court then held that that fact “in nowise alter [ed]” its view of the immunity issue. 58 N. D., at 648, 227 N. W., at 54. Thus, the only authority that has been cited to us or that we have found is directly opposed to the Court’s conclusion.
I would reverse the judgment of the California Court of Appeal, and remit the plaintiffs-respondents to those remedies prescribed by the statutes of Nevada.