Court Opinion

ID: 9448994
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:51:52.887221+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:38.417573
License: Public Domain

*734JOHN R. BROWN, Circuit Judge
(concurring specially).
I concur in the result and in much of the Court’s opinion.
But in at least two places the Court states that “the State of Alabama is constitutionally immune from suit.” 311 F.2d 729.1 Apart from the Eleventh Amendment, I find nothing in the Constitution nor in the elaborate structure of the opinion in Hans v. Louisiana, 1890, 134 U.S. 1, 10 S.Ct. 504, 33 L.Ed. 842, to support that conclusion as a matter of federal constitutional law. Sovereign immunity, threadbare as it generally is, is recognized in law. It may, as it does here, deny effectual enforcement to a clear legal right. But that does not raise this notion to the stature of a federal constitutional right.
Moreover, I think the constitutional crisis generated by Chisholm v. Georgia, 1792, 2 Dall. 419, 2 U.S. 419, 1 L.Ed. 440, refutes this Court’s thesis that when it was all said and done the Eleventh Amendment “ * * * did not add anything to the Constitution and did not take anything from it.” 311 F.2d 730. And to the extent that Hans v. Louisiana really puts the result on the basis of the traditional immunity of a State, rather than on the obvious implications of the Eleventh Amendment, it seems clear to me that the Supreme Court did not undertake to cast it,2 as does this Court, in terms of a Constitution of enumerated powers and the “basic fact that such power is not lodged in the federal judiciary under our constitutional system.” 311 F.2d 731. This latter would, among other things, mean that jurisdiction would be conferred by consent (of the sovereign waiving its immunity). This certainly contradicts a basic concept of a limited federal jurisdiction.
What the case presents is the anomaly of a clear legal right without any means of effectual enforcement. Without a doubt, Alabama and its operating agencies, the Terminal Railway and Docks Department are subject to the FELA. It is even likely that its scheme of vicarious workmen’s compensation constitutes an outright violation of the Act which prohibits any contract, rule, regulation or device to enable a common carrier to exempt itself from the liabilities imposed.3
But clear as is the legal right, invalid as is the substitute compensation pro*735gram, neither in the FELA nor in the Alabama statutes prescribing the physical operation of this interstate carrier is there enough material out of which to extract even the faintest notion of a waiver of that traditional immunity which Alabama painstakingly has additionally preserved by its own express constitutional provision.
The suit therefore must fall. But we should not by our discussion couched in language of a constitutional immunity apart from the Eleventh Amendment foreclose remedial action by Congress or, perhaps, judicial relief in its own courts at the hands of agencies of the United States Government whose statutory policy may not be thwarted by this plea.

. See also: “It is clear, therefore, that a State has the same constitutional immunity from suit by its own citizens as it has in suits brought against it by citizens of other States, and the courts will apply the same tests in determining whether the State has waived its immunity against its own citizen as it would apply if the suit were by a citizen of another State.” 311 F.2d 729.

. The strongest statement in Hans in this direction is: “The truth is, that the cognizance of suits and actions unknown to the law, and forbidden by the law, was not contemplated by the Constitution when establishing the judicial power of the United States.” 134 U.S. 1, 15, 10 S.Ct. 504, 507.
The Court speaks again in terms of suits unknown to or forbidden by law in Fitts v. McGhee, 1899, 172 U.S. 516, 524, 19 S.Ct. 269, 272, 43 L.Ed. 535.
“Is this a suit against the State of Alabama? It is true that the Eleventh Amendment of the Constitution of the United States does not in terms declare that the judicial power of the United states shall not extend to suits against a State by citizens of such State. But it has been adjudged by this court upon full consideration that a suit against a State by one of its own citizens, the State not having consented to be sued, was unknown to and forbidden by the law, as much so as suits against a State by citizens of another State of the Union, or by citizens or subjects of foreign states. Hans v. Louisiana, 134 U.S. 1, 10, 15 [10 S.Ct. 504, 1 L.Ed. 440] [33:842, 845, 847]; North Carolina v. Temple, 134 U.S. 22, [10 S.Ct. 509, 33 L.Ed. 849] [33:849]. It is therefore an immaterial circumstance in the present case that the plaintiffs do not appear to be citizens of another state than Alabama, and may be citizens of that state.”

. “Any contract, rule, regulation, or device whatsoever, the purpose or intent of which shall be to enable any common carrier to exempt itself from any liability created by this chapter, shall to that extent be void * * *.” 45 U.S.C.A. § 55.