Court Opinion

ID: 9746276
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 14:10:22.790031+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:11.351062
License: Public Domain

DANA, Justice,
with whom RUDMAN, Justice, joins, dissenting.
[¶ 14] I must respectfully dissent. Contrary to the Court’s conclusion, the Eleventh Amendment does not define the scope of state sovereign immunity. Athough the Supreme Court’s decision in Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida, 517 U.S. 44, 116 S.Ct. 1114, 134 L.Ed.2d 252 (1996), precludes Alden from prosecuting this action in federal court, neither Seminole Tribe nor the Supremacy Clause permits the State to interpose its sovereign immunity as a defense to a suit alleging a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”), 29 U.S.C. §§ 201-219 (1965, 1978 & Supp.1998), that is maintained in state court.
[¶ 15] Pursuant to the FLSA, an employee may bring an action alleging violations of, inter alia, the minimum wage and maximum hours provisions of the act, “against any employer (including a public agency) in any Federal or State court of competent jurisdic-tion_” Id. § 216(b) (Supp.1998). This provision clearly expresses a congressional intent to abrogate the states’ immunity from suit. The Court concludes that Congress lacks the authority to abrogate the states’ immunity from FLSA actions prosecuted in state courts by relying on Seminole Tribe, a reliance that is misplaced.
[¶ 16] In Seminole Tribe, the Supreme Court determined that the Indian Commerce Clause does not grant Congress the authority to abrogate the states’ Eleventh Amendment immunity. See 517 U.S.' at 47, 116 S.Ct. 1114. Prior to the Seminole Tribe decision, the Supreme Court had found only two constitutional provisions that provided Congress with the authority to abrogate Eleventh Amendment immunity: the Fourteenth Amendment, see Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, 427 U.S. 445, 96 S.Ct. 2666, 49 L.Ed.2d 614 (1976); and the Interstate Commerce Clause, see Pennsylvania v. Union Gas Co., 491 U.S. 1, 109 S.Ct. 2273, 105 L.Ed.2d 1 (1989). See Seminole Tribe, 517 U.S. at 59, 116 S.Ct. 1114. The Court agreed with the Seminole Tribe’s contention that “ ‘[t]here is no principled basis for finding that congressional power under the Indian Commerce Clause is less than that conferred by the Interstate Commerce Clause,’ ” id. at 60-62, 116 S.Ct. 1114, but it overruled the holding of Union Gas that the Interstate Commerce Clause grants Congress the power to abrogate Eleventh Amendment immunity, see id. at 66, 116 S.Ct. 1114. The Court reasoned that the holding of Unión Gas “deviated sharply” from the well-established constitutional principle that the Eleventh Amendment “limited the federal courts’ jurisdiction under Article III,” and it rejected the conclusion of the Union Gas plurality “that Congress could under Article I expand the scope of the federal courts’ jurisdiction under Article III.” Id. at 63, 116 S.Ct. 1114. The Court emphasized that “Article I cannot be used to circumvent the constitutional limitations placed upon federal jurisdiction.” Id. at 73, 116 S.Ct. 1114.
[¶ 17] In Seminole Tribe, therefore, the Court determined that Congress had exceeded its Article I powers by seeking to expand the jurisdiction of Article III courts beyond the limits imposed by the Eleventh Amendment. That decision provides little guidance as to the proper resolution of this case: state courts are not Article III courts, and “the Eleventh Amendment does not apply in state courts,” Hilton v. South Carolina Pub. Ry. Comm’n, 502 U.S. 197, 205, 112 S.Ct. 560, 116 L.Ed.2d 560 (1991). See also Bunch v. Robinson, 122 Md.App. 437, 712 A.2d 585 (Md.Ct.Spec.App. 1998) (“The Eleventh Amendment addresses the susceptibility of a state to suit in federal court, not the general immunity of a state from private suit.”). In contrast, the analytical framework set forth in Hilton v. South Carolina Public Railways Commission, 502 U.S. 197, 112 S.Ct. 560, 116 *177L.Ed.2d 560 (1991), sheds considerable light on our inquiry.
[¶ 18] In Hilton, the Court considered whether the Federal Employers’ Liability Act (“FELA”), 45 Ü.S.C. §§ 51-60 (1986), permits a cause of action against state-owned railroads in state courts. See 502 U.S. at 199, 116 L.Ed.2d 560. The Court had held in 1964 that FELA authorizes damages suits against state-owned railroads, and that states waive their Eleventh Amendment immunity by engaging in the railway business. See Parden v. Terminal Ry. of Alabama Docks Dep’t, 377 U.S. 184, 84 S.Ct. 1207, 12 L.Ed.2d 233 (1964). The Court reconsidered the Parden holding in 1987, however, and concluded that FELA, as incorporated by the Jones Act, 46 U.S.C. app. § 688 (Supp.1998), did not abrogate states’ Eleventh Amendment immunity. See Welch v. Texas Dep’t of Highways and Pub. Transp., 483 U.S. 468, 107 S.Ct. 2941, 97 L.Ed.2d 389 (1987).
[¶ 19] Rejecting a contention that the Welch decision controlled its inquiry, the Court in Hilton concluded that FELA does authorize causes of action against the states in their courts. See Hilton, 502 U.S. at 203, 116 L.Ed.2d 560. The Court reasoned:
the most vital consideration of our decision today, which is that to confer immunity from state-court suit would strip all FELA and Jones Act protection from workers employed by the States, was not addressed or at all discussed in the Welch decision. Indeed, that omission can best be explained by the assumption ... that the Jones Act (and so too FELA) by its terms extends to the States. This coverage, and the jurisdiction of state courts to entertain a suit free from Eleventh Amendment constraints, is a plausible explanation for the absence in Welch of any discussion of the practical adverse effects of overruling that portion of Parden which pertained only to the Eleventh Amendment, since continued state-court jurisdiction made those effects minimal.
Id. at 203-04, 112 S.Ct. 560 (footnote omitted) (emphasis added). The Court observed that the issue in Hilton “is different from the issue in our Eleventh Amendment cases in a fundamental respect: The latter cases involve the application of a rule of constitutional law, while the former case[] appl[ies] an ordinary rule of statutory construction.” Id. at 205, 112 S.Ct. 560 (quotation omitted) (emphasis added). Although the Court’s construction of FELA relied heavily upon Par-den and stare decisis, it observed that the “primary focus” of a statutory construction should be “the language and history” of the statute. Id. at 205, 112 S.Ct. 560. The Court cautioned that although the scope of Eleventh Amendment immunity is “a relevant consideration,” achieving symmetry between a state’s liability in state and federal courts should not be imperative. Id. at 205-06, 112 S.Ct. 560. The Hilton decision concluded that because FELA imposes liability upon the states, “the Supremacy Clause makes that statute the law in every State, fully enforceable in state court.” Id. at 207, 112 S.Ct. 560.
[¶20] The Court’s decision in this case accords symmetry undue weight, is devoid of any analysis of the FLSA, and does not address the Supremacy Clause. A different, and in my opinion better, approach is illustrated by the recent decision of the Arkansas Supreme Court in Jacoby v. Arkansas Department of Education, 331 Ark. 508, 962 S.W.2d 773 (1998). In Jacoby, the court concluded that neither the Eleventh Amendment nor the sovereign immunity provision of the Arkansas Constitution2 prevents state employees from maintaining an FLSA cause of action against the state in state court. See id. at 775-78; see also Ribitzki v. School Bd. of Highlands County, 710 So.2d 226 (Fla. Dist.Ct.App.1998) (holding that the Eleventh Amendment does not immunize the state from an FLSA action in state court); Bunch, 122 Md.App. 437, 712 A.2d 585, (holding that the Supremacy Clause requires state courts to enforce the FLSA against the states and that the scope of states’ sovereign immunity from suit in their own courts is not coterminous with them Eleventh Amendment immu*178nity). The Jacoby court determined that the Seminole Tribe decision was not conclusive “of state liability in its own courts.” 962 S.W.2d at 777. The court reasoned that pursuant to the Supremacy Clause, the FLSA must be treated as much the law of Arkansas as laws passed by the Arkansas legislature. See id. at 775. The court observed that “state employees ... are clearly entitled to file FLSA claims against state agencies as employers”; that “the FLSA expressly provides that state courts have jurisdiction over these claims”; and that the FLSA is “the law throughout the land, and state sovereign immunity cannot impede it.” Id. at 777.
[¶21] The Supreme Court has decided that Congress acted within its Article I powers and did not violate the Tenth Amendment when it provided state employees with the protections afforded by the FLSA. See Garcia v. San Antonio Metro. Transit Auth., 469 U.S. 528, 555-56, 105 S.Ct. 1005, 83 L.Ed.2d 1016 (1985), reh’g denied, 471 U.S. 1049, 105 S.Ct. 2041, 85 L.Ed.2d 340 (1985).3 Pursuant to the Supremacy Clause, “[t]his Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof ... shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.” U.S. Const, art. 6. As the Supreme Court explained in Howlett v. Rose,
[fjederal law is enforceable in state courts ... because the Constitution and laws passed pursuant to it are as much laws in the States as laws passed by the state legislature. The Supremacy Clause makes those laws ‘the supreme Law of the Land,’ and charges state courts with a coordinate responsibility to enforce that law according to their regular modes of procedure.
496 U.S. 356, 367, 110 S.Ct. 2430, 110 L.Ed.2d 332 (1990). “[W]hen Congress acts within its enumerated powers to create a federal cause of action that imposes liability on the states, state courts of general jurisdiction may not refuse to hear the federal claim.” Bunch, 122 Md.App. at 446-47, 712 A.2d 585. To the extent that Maine’s common law doctrine of sovereign immunity conflicts with the provisions of the FLSA which subject the State to liability in state court, the Supremacy Clause resolves that conflict in favor of the FLSA Cf. Howlett, 496 U.S. at 377-78, 110 L.Ed.2d 332 (rejecting interpretation of Florida’s sovereign immunity statute that rendered all state subdivisions immune from section 1983 actions maintained in Florida courts and concluding, “[t]o the extent that the Florida law of sovereign immunity reflects a substantive disagreement with the extent to which governmental entities should be held liable for their constitutional violations, that disagreement cannot override the dictates of federal law.”).
[¶ 22] A determination that the Supremacy Clause requires states to defend FLSA causes of action that are prosecuted in state courts, contrary to the Court’s concern, would not “vitiate the Eleventh Amendment.” Such a determination would not strip the State of its sovereign immunity whenever a litigant sought to prosecute a federally-created cause of action against it. The FLSA’s express authorization of suits against state employers in state courts constitutes an explicit statement of congressional intent to abrogate the states’ immunity from suit in their own courts. If a statute creating a federal cause of action does not contain an express statement of congressional intent to abrogate states’ immunity, then a state could successfully interpose its sovereign immunity as a defense to that cause of action.4 See *179Hilton, 502 U.S. at 206, 112 S.Ct. 560 (“When the issue to be resolved is one of statutory construction, of congressional intent to impose monetary liability on the States, the requirement of a clear statement by Congress to impose such liability creates a rule that ought to be of assistance to the Congress and the courts in drafting and interpreting legislation.”).
[¶ 23] I would vacate the judgment of the Superior Court.

. Pursuant to Article 5, section 20 of the Arkansas Constitution, "[t]he State of Arkansas shall never be made a defendant in any of her courts.”

. In Garcia, the Court observed that federal su: pervision over "the judicial action of the States is ... permissible ... as to matters by the Constitution specifically authorized or delegated to the United States.” 469 U.S. at 549, 105 S.Ct. 1005 (quotation and citation omitted). The Court reasoned: "we perceive nothing in the overtime and minimum-wage requirements of the FLSA ... that is destructive of state sovereignty or violative of any constitutional provision.” Id. at 554, 105 S.Ct. 1005.

. Similarly, the Maine Legislature may waive the State’s sovereign immunity only by enacting "a general law plainly conferring the State’s consent to be sued as to a class of cases,” or by dealing “specifically with a particular action sought to be brought against the State and giv[ing] its plainly stated consent that the State be sued in that action.” Drake v. Smith, 390 A.2d 541, 544 (Me. 1978). Thus, the ability of Congress, when enacting valid legislation, to abrogate the State of Maine's immunity from suit in *179its own courts parallels the Maine Legislature's ability to waive the State’s sovereign immunity.