 |
Ex Parte Young |
| LIABILITY OF STATE GOVERNMENT ENTITIES |
The legislature of the State of Minnesota enacted a law reducing the rates which could be charged by railroads and providing criminal penalties for violation of the act. Shareholders of nine railroads filed suit in the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota which alleged, among other things, that the rate reductions unconstitutionally deprived them of property without due process of law and in violation of the equal protection of the laws. The district court issued a preliminary injunction against Minnesota Attorney General Young, prohibiting him "from taking or instituting any action or proceeding to enforce the penalties and remedies specified within the act...or to compel obedience to that act, or compliance therewith, or any part thereof." 209 U.S. at 132.
The day after the preliminary injunction was issued, Attorney General Young, in violation of the injunction, obtained a writ of mandamus in state court that commanded a railroad company to comply with the lower rates set in the new legislation. The district court then held Young to be in contempt. Young applied to the United States Supreme Court for a writ of habeas corpus.
Mr. Justice Peckham delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question of jurisdiction, whether of the Circuit Court or of this court, is frequently a delicate matter to deal with, and it is especially so in this case, where the material and most important objection to the jurisdiction of the Circuit Court is the assertion that the suit is in effect against one of the States of the Union. It is a question, however, which we are called upon, and which it is our duty, to decide.
We conclude that the Circuit Court had jurisdiction in the case before it, because it involved the decision of Federal questions arising under the Constitution of the United States.
This inquiry necessitates an examination of the most material and important objection made to the jurisdiction of the Circuit Court, the objection being that the suit is, in effect, one against the State of Minnesota, and that the injunction issued against the Attorney General illegally prohibits state action, either criminal or civil, to enforce obedience to the statutes of the State. This objection is to be considered with reference to the Eleventh and Fourteenth Amendments to the Federal Constitution. The Eleventh Amendment prohibits the commencement or prosecution of any suit against one of the United States by citizens of another State or citizens or subjects of any foreign State. The Fourteenth Amendment provides that no State shall deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law, nor shall it deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
The case before the Circuit Court proceeded upon the theory that the orders and acts heretofore mentioned would, if enforced, violate rights of the complainants protected by the latter Amendment. We think that whatever the rights of complainants may be, they are largely founded upon that Amendment, but a decision of this case does not require an examination or decision of the question whether its adoption in any way altered or limited the effect of the earlier Amendment. We may assume that each exists in full force, and that we must give to the Eleventh Amendment all the effect it naturally would have, without cutting it down or rendering its meaning any more narrow than the language, fairly interpreted, would warrant. It applies to a suit brought against a State by one of its own citizens as well as to a suit brought by a citizen of another State. Hans v. Louisiana, 134 U.S. 1. It was adopted after the decision of this court in Chisholm v. Georgia (1793), 2 Dall. 419 where it was held that a State might be sued by a citizen of another State. Since that time there have been many cases decided in this court involving the Eleventh Amendment, among them being Osborn v. United States Bank (1824), 9 Wheat. 738, 846, 857, which held that the Amendment applied only to those suits in which the State was a party on the record. In the subsequent case of Governor of Georgia v. Madrazo
The cases upon the subject were reviewed, and it was held, In re Ayers
A suit of such a nature was simply an attempt to make the State itself, through its officers, perform its alleged contract, by directing those officers to do acts which constituted such performance. The State alone had any interest in the question, and a decree in favor of plaintiff would affect the treasury of the State.
It is contended that the complainants do not complain and they care nothing about any action which Mr. Young might take or bring as an ordinary individual, but that he was complained of as an officer, to whose discretion is confided the use of the name of the State of Minnesota so far as litigation is concerned, and that when or how he shall use it is a matter resting in his discretion and cannot be controlled by any court.
The answer to all this is the same as made in every case where an official claims to be acting under the authority of the State. The act to be enforced is alleged to be unconstitutional, and if it be so, the use of the name of the State to enforce an unconstitutional act to the injury of complainants is a proceeding without the authority of and one which does not affect the State in its sovereign or governmental capacity. It is simply an illegal act upon the part of a state official in attempting by the use of the name of the State to enforce a legislative enactment which is void because unconstitutional. If the act which the state Attorney General seeks to enforce be a violation of the Federal Constitution, the officer in proceeding under such enactment comes into conflict with the superior authority of that Constitution, and he is in that case stripped of his official or representative character and is subjected in his person to the consequences of his individual conduct. The State has no power to impart to him any immunity from responsibility to the supreme authority of the United States. See In re Ayers, supra, page 507. It would be an injury to complainant to harass it with a multiplicity of suits or litigation generally in an endeavor to enforce penalties under an unconstitutional enactment, and to prevent it ought to be within the jurisdiction of a court of equity. If the question of unconstitutionality with reference, at least, to the Federal Constitution be first raised in a Federal court that court, as we think is shown by the authorities cited hereafter, has the right to decide it to the exclusion of all other courts.
Mr. Justice Harlan, dissenting.
Let it be observed that the suit instituted by Perkins and Shepard in the Circuit Court of the United States was, as to the defendant Young, one against him as, and only because he was, Attorney General of Minnesota. No relief was sought against him individually but only in his capacity as Attorney General. And the manifest, indeed the avowed and admitted, object of seeking such relief was to tie the hands of the State so that it could not in any manner or by any mode of proceeding, in its own courts, test the validity of the statutes and orders in question. It would therefore seem clear that within the true meaning of the Eleventh Amendment the suit brought in the Federal court was one, in legal effect, against the State -- as much so as if the State had been formally named on the record as a party -- and therefore it was a suit to which, under the Amendment, so far as the State or its Attorney General was concerned, the judicial power of the United States did not and could not extend. If this proposition be sound it will follow -- indeed, it is conceded that if, so far as relief is sought against the Attorney General of Minnesota, this be a suit against the State -- then the order of the Federal court enjoining that officer from taking any action, suit, step or proceeding to compel the railway company to obey the Minnesota statute was beyond the jurisdiction of that court and wholly void; in which case, that officer was at liberty to proceed in the discharge of his official duties as defined by the laws of the State, and the order adjudging him to be in contempt for bringing the mandamus proceeding in the state court was a nullity.
, 26 U.S. 110 (1828), that holding was somewhat enlarged, and Chief Justice Marshall, delivering the opinion of the court, while citing Osborn v. United States Bank, supra, said that where the claim was made, as in the case then before the court, against the Governor of Georgia as governor, and the demand was made upon him, not personally, but officially (for moneys in the treasury of the State and for slaves in possession of the state government), the State might be considered as the party on the record (page 123), and therefore the suit could not be maintained.
, 123 U.S. 443, that a bill in equity brought against officers of a State, who, as individuals, have no personal interest in the subject-matter of the suit, and defend only as representing the State, where the relief prayed for, if done, would constitute a performance by the State of the alleged contract of the State, was a suit against the State (page 504), following in this respect Hagood v. Southern, supra.
 |
Notes on Ex Parte Young |
, 517 U.S. 44, 58 (1996) ("[W]e have often made it clear that the relief sought by a plaintiff suing a State is irrelevant to the question whether the suit is barred by the Eleventh Amendment. . . . The Eleventh Amendment does not exist solely in order to ‘preven[t] federal-court judgments that must be paid out of a State's treasury'; it also serves to avoid ‘the indignity of subjecting a State to the coercive process of judicial tribunals at the instance of private parties.'").
, 465 U.S. 89 (1984), the Court held that the Eleventh Amendment bars a federal court action for prospective injunctive relief against a state official alleged to have violated state, as opposed to federal law.
[T]he injunction in Young was justified . . . on the view that sovereign immunity does not apply because an official who acts unconstitutionally is "stripped of his official or representative character. . . . Our decisions have repeatedly emphasized that the Young doctrine rests on the need to promote the vindication of federal rights.The Court also has recognized, however, that the need to promote the supremacy of federal law must be accommodated to the constitutional immunity of the States. . . . This need to reconcile competing interests is wholly absent, however, when a plaintiff alleges that a state official has violated state law. In such a case, the entire basis for the doctrine of Young . . . disappears. A federal court's grant of relief against state officials on the basis of state law, whether retroactive or prospective, does not vindicate the supreme authority of federal law. On the contrary, it is difficult to think of a greater intrusion on state sovereignty than when a federal court instructs state officials on how to conform their conduct to state law. Such a result conflicts with the principles of federalism that underlie the Eleventh Amendment. We conclude that Young...[is] inapplicable in a suit against state officials on the basis of state law.
Halderman
The Court rejected the court of appeals' ruling that it was permitted to issue an injunction against state officials to restrain violations of state law under the federal court's pendent (now supplemental) jurisdiction:
[P]endent jurisdiction is a judge-made doctrine of expediency and efficiency derived from the general Art. III language conferring power to hear all "cases" arising under federal law or between diverse parties. The Eleventh Amendment should not be construed to apply with less force to this implied form of jurisdiction than it does to the explicitly granted power to hear federal claims.Halderman
The Halderman decision has created special tactical issues for plaintiffs seeking to enjoin state official's actions that contravene both the United States Constitution and state law. See Chapter VI, infra.
Although the text of the Amendment would appear to restrict only the Article III diversity jurisdiction of the federal courts, "we have understood the Eleventh Amendment to stand not so much for what it says, but for the presupposition . . . which it confirms." That presupposition, first observed over a century ago in Hans v. Louisiana
Seminole Tribe of Fla. v. Florida, 517 U.S. 44, 54 (1996). For a competing view that a suit against a State by a citizen of that State is not barred by the Eleventh Amendment, see Kimel v. Florida Board of Regents, 528 U.S. 62, 95 (2000) (Stevens, J. dissenting); Seminole Tribe, 517 U.S at 101-168 (Souter, J. dissenting); Atascadero State Hospital v. Scanlon, 473 U.S. 234, 247-302 (Brennan, J. dissenting).
|
Edelman v. Jordan |
Mr. Justice Rehnquist delivered the opinion of the Court.
Respondent John Jordan filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, individually and as a representative of a class, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief against two former directors of the Illinois Department of Public Aid, the director of the Cook County Department of Public Aid, and the comptroller of Cook County. Respondent alleged that these state officials were administering the federal-state programs of Aid to the Aged, Blind, or Disabled (AABD) in a manner inconsistent with various federal regulations and with the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
AABD is one of the categorical aid programs administered by the Illinois Department of Public Aid pursuant to the Illinois Public Aid Code, Ill. Rev. Stat., c. 23, §§ 3-1 through 3-12 (1973). Under the Social Security Act, the program is funded by the State and the Federal Governments. 42 U. S. C. §§ 1381-1385. The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), which administers these payments for the Federal Government, issued regulations prescribing maximum permissible time standards within which States participating in the program had to process AABD applications. Those regulations, originally issued in 1968, required, at the time of the institution of this suit, that eligibility determinations must be made by the States within 30 days of receipt of applications for aid to the aged and blind, and within 45 days of receipt of applications for aid to the disabled. For those persons found eligible, the assistance check was required to be received by them within the applicable time period. 45 CFR § 206.10 (a)(3).
During the period in which the federal regulations went into effect, Illinois public aid officials were administering the benefits pursuant to their own regulations as provided in the Categorical Assistance Manual of the Illinois Department of Public Aid. Respondent's complaint charged that the Illinois defendants, operating under those regulations, were improperly authorizing grants to commence only with the month in which an application was approved and not including prior eligibility months for which an applicant was entitled to aid under federal law. The complaint also alleged that the Illinois defendants were not processing the applications within the applicable time requirements of the federal regulations; specifically, respondent alleged that his own application for disability benefits was not acted on by the Illinois Department of Public Aid for almost four months. Such actions of the Illinois officials were alleged to violate federal law and deny the equal protection of the laws. Respondent's prayer requested declaratory and injunctive relief, and specifically requested "a permanent injunction enjoining the defendants to award to the entire class of plaintiffs all AABD benefits wrongfully withheld."
In its judgment of March 15, 1972, the District Court declared § 4004 of the Illinois Manual to be invalid insofar as it was inconsistent with the federal regulations found in 45 CFR § 206.10 (a)(3), and granted a permanent injunction requiring compliance with the federal time limits for processing and paying AABD applicants. The District Court, in paragraph 5 of its judgment, also ordered the state officials to "release and remit AABD benefits wrongfully withheld to all applicants for AABD in the State of Illinois who applied between July 1, 1968 [the date of the federal regulations] and April 16, 197[1] [the date of the preliminary injunction issued by the District Court] and were determined eligible . . . ."
On appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, the Illinois officials contended, inter alia, that the Eleventh Amendment barred the award of retroactive benefits, that the judgment of inconsistency between the federal regulations and the provisions of the Illinois Categorical Assistance Manual could be given prospective effect only, and that the federal regulations in question were inconsistent with the Social Security Act itself. The Court of Appeals rejected these contentions and affirmed the judgment of the District Court. Jordan v. Weaver, 472 F.2d 985 (1973). Because of an apparent conflict on the Eleventh Amendment issue with the decision of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Rothstein v. Wyman, 467 F.2d 226 (1972), cert. denied, 411 U.S. 921 (1973), we granted the petition for certiorari filed by petitioner Joel Edelman, who is the present Director of the Illinois Department of Public Aid, and successor to the former directors sued below. 412 U.S. 937 (1973). The petition for certiorari raised the same contentions urged by the petitioner in the Court of Appeals. Because we believe the Court of Appeals erred in its disposition of the Eleventh Amendment claim, we reverse that portion of the Court of Appeals decision which affirmed the District Court's order that retroactive benefits be paid by the Illinois state officials.
The historical basis of the Eleventh Amendment has been oft stated, and it represents one of the more dramatic examples of this Court's effort to derive meaning from the document given to the Nation by the Framers nearly 200 years ago. A leading historian of the Court tells us:
Despite such disclaimers,9
The issue was squarely presented to the Court in a suit brought at the August 1792 Term by two citizens of South Carolina, executors of a British creditor, against the State of Georgia. After a year's postponement for preparation on the part of the State of Georgia, the Court, after argument, rendered in February 1793, its shortlived decision in Chisholm v. Georgia
"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."
While the Amendment by its terms does not bar suits against a State by its own citizens, this Court has consistently held that an unconsenting State is immune from suits brought in federal courts by her own citizens as well as by citizens of another State. Hans v. Louisiana
Thus the rule has evolved that a suit by private parties seeking to impose a liability which must be paid from public funds in the state treasury is barred by the Eleventh Amendment. Great Northern Life Insurance Co. v. Read, supra; Kennecott Copper Corp. v. State Tax Comm'n, 327 U.S. 573 (1946).
The Court of Appeals in this case, while recognizing that the Hans line of cases permitted the State to raise the Eleventh Amendment as a defense to suit by its own citizens, nevertheless concluded that the Amendment did not bar the award of retroactive payments of the statutory benefits found to have been wrongfully withheld. The Court of Appeals held that the above-cited cases, when read in light of this Court's landmark decision in Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123 (1908), do not preclude the grant of such a monetary award in the nature of equitable restitution.
Petitioner concedes that Ex parte Young, supra, is no bar to that part of the District Court's judgment that prospectively enjoined petitioner's predecessors from failing to process applications within the time limits established by the federal regulations. Petitioner argues, however, that Ex parte Young does not extend so far as to permit a suit which seeks the award of an accrued monetary liability which must be met from the general revenues of a State, absent consent or waiver by the State of its Eleventh Amendment immunity, and that therefore the award of retroactive benefits by the District Court was improper.
Ex parte Young was a watershed case in which this Court held that the Eleventh Amendment did not bar an action in the federal courts seeking to enjoin the Attorney General of Minnesota from enforcing a statute claimed to violate the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. This holding has permitted the Civil War Amendments to the Constitution to serve as a sword, rather than merely as a shield, for those whom they were designed to protect. But the relief awarded in Ex parte Young was prospective only; the Attorney General of Minnesota was enjoined to conform his future conduct of that office to the requirement of the Fourteenth Amendment. Such relief is analogous to that awarded by the District Court in the prospective portion of its order under review in this case.
But the retroactive portion of the District Court's order here, which requires the payment of a very substantial amount of money which that court held should have been paid, but was not, stands on quite a different footing. These funds will obviously not be paid out of the pocket of petitioner Edelman. Addressing himself to a similar situation in Rothstein v. Wyman, 467 F.2d 226 (CA2 1972), cert. denied, 411 U.S. 921 (1973), Judge McGowan observed for the court:
"It is one thing to tell the Commissioner of Social Services that he must comply with the federal standards for the future if the state is to have the benefit of federal funds in the programs he administers. It is quite another thing to order the Commissioner to use state funds to make reparation for the past. The latter would appear to us to fall afoul of the Eleventh Amendment if that basic constitutional provision is to be conceived of as having any present force." 467 F.2d, at 236-237 (footnotes omitted).
We agree with Judge McGowan's observations. The funds to satisfy the award in this case must inevitably come from the general revenues of the State of Illinois, and thus the award resembles far more closely the monetary award against the State itself, Ford Motor Co. v. Department of Treasury, supra, than it does the prospective injunctive relief awarded in Ex parte Young.
The Court of Appeals, in upholding the award in this case, held that it was permissible because it was in the form of "equitable restitution" instead of damages, and therefore capable of being tailored in such a way as to minimize disruptions of the state program of categorical assistance. But we must judge the award actually made in this case, and not one which might have been differently tailored in a different case, and we must judge it in the context of the important constitutional principle embodied in the Eleventh Amendment.11
We do not read Ex parte Young or subsequent holdings of this Court to indicate that any form of relief may be awarded against a state officer, no matter how closely it may in practice resemble a money judgment payable out of the state treasury, so long as the relief may be labeled "equitable" in nature. The Court's opinion in Ex parte Young hewed to no such line. Its citation of Hagood v. Southern, 117 U.S. 52 (1886), and In re Ayers
As in most areas of the law, the difference between the type of relief barred by the Eleventh Amendment and that permitted under Ex parte Young will not in many instances be that between day and night. The injunction issued in Ex parte Young was not totally without effect on the State's revenues, since the state law which the Attorney General was enjoined from enforcing provided substantial monetary penalties against railroads which did not conform to its provisions. Later cases from this Court have authorized equitable relief which has probably had greater impact on state treasuries than did that awarded in Ex parte Young. In Graham v. Richardson, 403 U.S. 365 (1971), Arizona and Pennsylvania welfare officials were prohibited from denying welfare benefits to otherwise qualified recipients who were aliens. In Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U.S. 254 (1970), New York City welfare officials were enjoined from following New York State procedures which authorized the termination of benefits paid to welfare recipients without prior hearing. But the fiscal consequences to state treasuries in these cases were the necessary result of compliance with decrees which by their terms were prospective in nature. State officials, in order to shape their official conduct to the mandate of the Court's decrees, would more likely have to spend money from the state treasury than if they had been left free to pursue their previous course of conduct. Such an ancillary effect on the state treasury is a permissible and often an inevitable consequence of the principle announced in Ex parte Young, supra.
But that portion of the District Court's decree which petitioner challenges on Eleventh Amendment grounds goes much further than any of the cases cited. It requires payment of state funds, not as a necessary consequence of compliance in the future with a substantive federal-question determination, but as a form of compensation to those whose applications were processed on the slower time schedule at a time when petitioner was under no court-imposed obligation to conform to a different standard. While the Court of Appeals described this retroactive award of monetary relief as a form of "equitable restitution," it is in practical effect indistinguishable in many aspects from an award of damages against the State. It will to a virtual certainty be paid from state funds, and not from the pockets of the individual state officials who were the defendants in the action. It is measured in terms of a monetary loss resulting from a past breach of a legal duty on the part of the defendant state officials.
The Court of Appeals held in the alternative that even if the Eleventh Amendment be deemed a bar to the retroactive relief awarded respondent in this case, the State of Illinois had waived its Eleventh Amendment immunity and consented to the bringing of such a suit by participating in the federal AABD program. The Court of Appeals relied upon our holdings in Parden v. Terminal R. Co.
But in this case the threshold fact of congressional authorization to sue a class of defendants which literally includes States is wholly absent. Thus respondent is not only precluded from relying on this Court's holding in Employees, but on this Court's holdings in Parden and Petty as well.
Our Brother Marshall argues in dissent, and the Court of Appeals held, that although the Social Security Act itself does not create a private cause of action, the cause of action created by 42 U. S. C. § 1983, coupled with the enactment of the AABD program, and the issuance by HEW of regulations which require the States to make corrective payments after successful "fair hearings" and provide for federal matching funds to satisfy federal court orders of retroactive payments, indicate that Congress intended a cause of action for public aid recipients such as respondent. It is, of course, true that Rosado v. Wyman
Respondent urges that since the various Illinois officials sued in the District Court failed to raise the Eleventh Amendment as a defense to the relief sought by respondent, petitioner is therefore barred19
For the foregoing reasons we decide that the Court of Appeals was wrong in holding that the Eleventh Amendment did not constitute a bar to that portion of the District Court decree which ordered retroactive payment of benefits found to have been wrongfully withheld. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is therefore reversed and the cause remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
So ordered.
Mr. Justice Brennan, dissenting.
This suit is brought by Illinois citizens against Illinois officials. In that circumstance, Illinois may not invoke the Eleventh Amendment, since that Amendment bars only federal court suits against States by citizens of other States. Rather, the question is whether Illinois may avail itself of the nonconstitutional but ancient doctrine of sovereign immunity as a bar to respondent's claim for retroactive AABD payments. In my view Illinois may not assert sovereign immunity for the reason I expressed in dissent in Employees v. Department of Public Health and Welfare
I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.
Mr. Justice Marshall, with whom Mr. Justice Blackmun joins, dissenting.
In agreeing to comply with the requirements of the Social Security Act and HEW regulations, I believe that Illinois has also agreed to subject itself to suit in the federal courts to enforce these obligations. I recognize, of course, that the Social Security Act does not itself provide for a cause of action to enforce its obligations. As the Court points out, the only sanction expressly provided in the Act for a participating State's failure to comply with federal requirements is the cutoff of federal funding by the Secretary of HEW. Former 42 U. S. C. § 1384 (now 42 U. S. C. § 804 (1970 ed., Supp. II)).
But a cause of action is clearly provided by 42 U. S. C. § 1983, which in terms authorizes suits to redress deprivations of rights secured by the "laws" of the United States. And we have already rejected the argument that Congress intended the funding cutoff to be the sole remedy for noncompliance with federal requirements. In Rosado v. Wyman
Absent any remedy which may act with retroactive effect, state welfare officials have everything to gain and nothing to lose by failing to comply with the congressional mandate that assistance be paid with reasonable promptness to all eligible individuals. This is not idle speculation without basis in practical experience. In this very case, for example, Illinois officials have knowingly violated since 1968 federal regulations on the strength of an argument as to its invalidity which even the majority deems unworthy of discussion. Ante, at 659-660, n. 8. Without a retroactive-payment remedy, we are indeed faced with "the spectre of a state, perhaps calculatingly, defying federal law and thereby depriving welfare recipients of the financial assistance Congress thought it was giving them." Jordan v. Weaver, 472 F.2d 985, 995 (CA7 1972). Like the Court of Appeals, I cannot believe that Congress could possibly have intended any such result.
"The right of the Federal Judiciary to summon a State as defendant and to adjudicate its rights and liabilities had been the subject of deep apprehension and of active debate at the time of the adoption of the Constitution; but the existence of any such right had been disclaimed by many of the most eminent advocates of the new Federal Government, and it was largely owing to their successful dissipation of the fear of the existence of such Federal power that the Constitution was finally adopted." 1 C. Warren, The Supreme Court in United States History 91 (rev. ed. 1937).
the very first suit entered in this Court at its February Term in 1791 was brought against the State of Maryland by a firm of Dutch bankers as creditors. Vanstophorst v. Maryland, see 2 Dall. 401 and Warren, supra, at 91 n. 1. The subsequent year brought the institution of additional suits against other States, and caused considerable alarm and consternation in the country.
, 2 U.S. 419. The decision in that case, that a State was liable to suit by a citizen of another State or of a foreign country, literally shocked the Nation. Sentiment for passage of a constitutional amendment to override the decision rapidly gained momentum, and five years after Chisholm the Eleventh Amendment was officially announced by President John Adams. Unchanged since then, the Amendment provides:
, 134 U.S. 1 (1890); Duhne v. New Jersey, 251 U.S. 311 (1920); Great Northern Life Insurance Co. v. Read, 322 U.S. 47 (1944); Parden v. Terminal R. Co., 377 U.S. 184 (1964); Employees v. Department of Public Health and Welfare, 411 U.S. 279 (1973). It is also well established that even though a State is not named a party to the action, the suit may nonetheless be barred by the Eleventh Amendment. In Ford Motor Co. v. Department of Treasury, 323 U.S. 459 (1945), the Court said:
"When the action is in essence one for the recovery of money from the state, the state is the real, substantial party in interest and is entitled to invoke its sovereign immunity from suit even though individual officials are nominal defendants." Id., at 464.
"It is not pretended that these payments are to come from the personal resources of these appellants. Appellees expressly contemplate that they will, rather, involve substantial expenditures from the public funds of the state. . . .
, 123 U.S. 443 (1887), which were both actions against state officers for specific performance of a contract to which the State was a party, demonstrate that equitable relief may be barred by the Eleventh Amendment.
, 377 U.S. 184 (1964), and Petty v. Tennessee-Missouri Bridge Comm'n, 359 U.S. 275 (1959), and on the dissenting opinion of Judge Bright in Employees v. Department of Public Health and Welfare, 452 F.2d 820, 827 (CA8 1971). While the holding in the latter case was ultimately affirmed by this Court in 411 U.S. 279 (1973), we do not think that the answer to the waiver question turns on the distinction between Parden, supra, and Employees, supra. Both Parden and Employees involved a congressional enactment which by its terms authorized suit by designated plaintiffs against a general class of defendants which literally included States or state instrumentalities. Similarly, Petty v. Tennessee-Missouri Bridge Comm'n, supra, involved congressional approval, pursuant to the Compact Clause, of a compact between Tennessee and Missouri, which provided that each compacting State would have the power "to contract, to sue, and be sued in its own name." The question of waiver or consent under the Eleventh Amendment was found in those cases to turn on whether Congress had intended to abrogate the immunity in question, and whether the State by its participation in the program authorized by Congress had in effect consented to the abrogation of that immunity.
, 397 U.S. 397 (1970), held that suits in federal court under § 1983 are proper to secure compliance with the provisions of the Social Security Act on the part of participating States. But it has not heretofore been suggested that § 1983 was intended to create a waiver of a State's Eleventh Amendment immunity merely because an action could be brought under that section against state officers, rather than against the State itself. Though a § 1983 action may be instituted by public aid recipients such as respondent, a federal court's remedial power, consistent with the Eleventh Amendment, is necessarily limited to prospective injunctive relief, Ex parte Young, supra, and may not include a retroactive award which requires the payment of funds from the state treasury, Ford Motor Co. v. Department of Treasury, supra.
from raising the Eleventh Amendment defense in the Court of Appeals or in this Court. The Court of Appeals apparently felt the defense was properly presented, and dealt with it on the merits. We approve of this resolution, since it has been well settled since the decision in Ford Motor Co. v. Department of Treasury, supra, that the Eleventh Amendment defense sufficiently partakes of the nature of a jurisdictional bar so that it need not be raised in the trial court:
, 411 U.S. 279, 298 (1973): the States surrendered that immunity in Hamilton's words, "in the plan of the Convention," that formed the Union, at least insofar as the States granted Congress specifically enumerated powers. See id., at 319 n. 7; Parden v. Terminal R. Co., 377 U.S. 184 (1964). Congressional authority to enact the Social Security Act, of which AABD is a part, former 42 U. S. C. §§ 1381-1385 (now replaced by similar provisions in 42 U. S. C. § 801-804 (1970 ed., Supp. II)), is to be found in Art. I, § 8, cl. 1, one of the enumerated powers granted Congress by the States in the Constitution. I remain of the opinion that "because of its surrender, no immunity exists that can be the subject of a congressional declaration or a voluntary waiver," 411 U.S., at 300, and thus have no occasion to inquire whether or not Congress authorized an action for AABD retroactive benefits, or whether or not Illinois voluntarily waived the immunity by its continued participation in the program against the background of precedents which sustained judgments ordering retroactive payments.
, 397 U.S. 397, 420-423 (1970), we held that suits in federal court under § 1983 were proper to enforce the provisions of the Social Security Act against participating States. Mr. Justice Harlan, writing for the Court, examined the legislative history and found "not the slightest indication" that Congress intended to prohibit suits in federal court to enforce compliance with federal standards. Id., at 422.
|
Notes on Edelman v. Jordan |
, 519 U.S. 425 (1997), plaintiff sued the Regents of the University of California in federal court for damages for breach an agreement to hire him as a mathematical physicist at a laboratory that the University operated under a contract with the federal government. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the action was not barred by the Eleventh Amendment because, under a separate agreement with the University, the United States Department of Energy would pay any judgment issued against the University. The United States Supreme Court reversed, finding the suit precluded by the Eleventh Amendment:
[W]ith respect to the underlying Eleventh Amendment question, it is the entity's potential legal liability, rather than its ability or inability to require a third party to reimburse it, or to discharge the liability in the first instance, that is relevant. Surely, if the sovereign State of California should buy insurance to protect itself against potential tort liability to pedestrians stumbling on the steps of the State Capitol, it would not cease to be "one of the United States."Accordingly, we reject respondent's principal contention–that the Eleventh Amendment does not apply to this litigation because any award of damages would be paid by the Department of Energy, and therefore have no impact upon the treasury of the State of California. The Eleventh Amendment protects the State from the risk of adverse judgments even though the State may be indemnified by a third party.
Regents of the University of California, 519 U.S. at 431.
, 517 U.S. 44 (1996), the Tribe sued the State of Florida and its Governor in federal court under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, 25 U.S.C. § 2702, seeking to order the defendants to negotiate a compact that would permit the Tribe to operate gaming activities. Under the Act, Indian tribes may conduct gaming activities only in accordance with a compact between the tribe and the State in which the gaming is to occur. The Act requires the State to negotiate in good faith with the tribe. Should the State fail to bargain, the tribe may sue the State in federal court to compel performance of the duty to negotiate. If the court finds the State breached its duty, the only remedy prescribed by Section 2710(d)(7) of the Act is an order directing the State and tribe to enter into a compact within 60 days. If the parties fail to conclude a compact by the 60 day deadline, the Act requires each party to submit a proposed compact to a mediator, who then chooses the compact that best conforms to the Act. If the State rejects the compact chosen by the mediator, the lone sanction is that the mediator notify the Secretary of the Interior, who then will promulgate regulations regulating zoning on the tribal lands.
While acknowledging that Congress intended to abrogate the States' Eleventh Amendment immunity when it enacted the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, the Supreme Court held that Congress lacked the power under the Indian Commerce Clause to abrogate that immunity. The Court further held that the Tribe could not evade the Eleventh Amendment by seeking prospective equitable relief in a suit against the Governor:
Where Congress has created a remedial scheme for the enforcement of a particular federal right, we have, in suits against federal officers, refused to supplement that scheme with one created by the judiciary. Schweiker v. Chilicky, 487 U.S. 412, 423 (1988) ("When the design of a Government program suggests that Congress has provided what it considers adequate remedial mechanisms for constitutional violations that may occur in the course of its administration, we have not created additional . . . remedies"). Here, of course, the question is not whether a remedy should be created, but instead is whether the Eleventh Amendment bar should be lifted, as it was in Ex Parte Young, in order to allow a suit against a state officer. Nevertheless, we think that the same general principle applies: Therefore, where Congress has prescribed a detailed remedial scheme for the enforcement against a State of a statutorily created right, a court should hesitate before casting aside those limitations and permitting an action against a state officer based upon Ex Parte Young.Here, Congress intended §2710(d)(3) to be enforced against the State in an action brought under §2710(d)(7); the intricate procedures set forth in that provision show that Congress intended therein not only to define, but also to limit significantly, the duty imposed by § 2710(d)(3).
* * * * * If § 2710(d)(3) could be enforced in a suit under Ex Parte Young, § 2710(d)(7) would have been superfluous; it is difficult to see why an Indian tribe would suffer through the intricate scheme of § 2710(d)(7) when more complete and more immediate relief would be available under Ex Parte Young. (citation omitted)
Here, of course, we have found that Congress does not have authority under the Constitution to make the State suable in federal court under § 2710(d)(7). Nevertheless, the fact that Congress chose to impose upon the State a liability that is significantly more limited than would be the liability imposed upon the state officer under Ex Parte Young strongly indicates that Congress had no wish to create the latter under § 2710(d)(3).
Seminole Tribe, 517 U.S. at 74-76.
, 521 U.S. 261 (1997). The case arose out of a suit in federal court filed by the Coeur d'Alene Tribe to establish the Tribe's claim to submerged lands within the boundaries of the Coeur d'Alene Reservation. In an effort to avoid the bar of the Eleventh Amendment, plaintiffs (a) named as defendants several state officials in their individual capacities; and (b) did not seek damages but instead sought a declaratory judgment establishing the Tribe's entitlement to the exclusive use and occupancy of the submerged lands as well as an injunction prohibiting defendants from taking any action violative of the Tribe's rights of exclusive use and occupancy. Despite the Tribe's effort to mold the case to the requirements of Ex Parte Young, the Court, in a 5-4 decision, held the suit barred by the Eleventh Amendment:
To interpret Young to permit a federal-court action to proceed in every case where prospective declaratory and injunctive relief is sought against an officer, named in his individual capacity, would be to adhere to an empty formalism and to undermine the principle, reaffirmed just last Term in Seminole Tribe, that Eleventh Amendment immunity represents a real limitation on a federal court's federal question jurisdiction. The real interests served by the Eleventh Amendment are not to be sacrificed to elementary mechanics of caption and pleadings.
* * * * * [I]f the Tribe were to prevail, Idaho's sovereign interest in its land and waters would be affected in a degree fully as intrusive as almost any conceivable retroactive levy upon funds in its Treasury. Under these particular and special circumstances, we find the Young exception inapplicable.
Id. at 270, 287.
Justice Kennedy, joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist, opined that avoiding Eleventh Amendment immunity by recourse to suing state officials for prospective relief should be limited generally to "where there is no state forum available to vindicate federal interests, thereby placing upon Article III courts the special obligation to ensure the supremacy of federal statutory and constitutional law." Id. at 270. Where a remedy is available in a state forum, "[t]he Young exception may not be applicable if the suit would ‘upset the balance of federal and state interests that it embodies.'" Id. at 277, quoting Papasan v. Allain, 478 U.S. 265, 277 (1986). In determining whether the plaintiff may successfully surmount Eleventh Amendment immunity by relying upon the Young fiction, the court must engage in a case-by-case "careful balancing and accommodation of state interests .... [C]ourts should consider whether there are ‘special factors counselling hesitation' before allowing a suit against a state official for prospective relief to proceed in federal court where a state forum is available." Id. at 278-80.
A majority of the Court, however, rejected Justice Kennedy's approach. In a concurring opinion joined by Justices Scalia and Thomas, Justice O'Connor disavowed Justice Kennedy's attempt to confine Ex Parte Young to instances where no relief is available in state court; instead, Justice O'Connor noted, "[n]ot only do our early Young cases fail to rely on the absence of a state forum as a basis for jurisdiction, but we also permitted federal actions to proceed even though a state forum was open to hear the plaintiff's claims." Id. at 292 (O'Connor, J., concurring). Justice O'Connor also repudiated Justice Kennedy's proposed balancing test:
The principal opinion characterizes our modern Young cases as fitting this case-by-case model. While it is true that the Court has decided a series of cases on the scope of the Young doctrine, these cases do not reflect the principal opinion's approach. Rather, they establish only that a Young suit is available where a plaintiff alleges an ongoing violation of federal law, and where the relief sought is prospective rather than retrospective.
Id. at 294 (O'Connor, J., concurring). In a dissenting opinion joined by Justices Stevens, Ginsburg and Breyer, Justice Souter likewise countered Justice Kennedy's construction of the Ex Parte Young doctrine:
Id. at 298-99 (Souter, J., dissenting) (citation omitted).
Do either Seminole Tribe or Coeur d'Alene restrict the availability of prospective relief under Section 1983 to redress violations of federal constitutional rights? Federal statutory rights?
In Seminole Tribe, the Court declared Ex Parte Young inapplicable to the case before it, having inferred that Congress meant to leave no such avenue of relief open to those claiming federal rights under the statute then under consideration .... When Congress has not so displaced the Young doctrine, a federal court has jurisdiction in an individual's action against state officers so long as two conditions are met. The plaintiff must allege that the officers are acting in violation of federal law, and must seek prospective relief to address an ongoing violation, not compensation or other retrospective relief for violations past. The Tribe's claim satisfies each condition.
, 473 U.S. 159 (1985), the Court differentiated between a Section 1983 action against a state official in his personal (or individual) capacity, and a suit against a state officer in his official capacity:
Personal-capacity suits seek to impose personal liability upon a government official for actions he takes under color of state law. See, e.g., Scheuer v. RhodesOn the merits, to establish personal liability in a § 1983 action, it is enough to show that the official, acting under color of state law, caused the deprivation of a federal right. See, e.g., Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167 (1961). More is required in an official-capacity action, however, for a governmental entity is liable under § 1983 only when the entity itself is a "‘moving force'" behind the deprivation, Polk County v. Dodson
Graham, 473 U.S. at 165-67. See also Brandon v. Holt, 469 U.S. 464 (1985) (action against municipal official in his "official capacity" is an action against the entity).
What would be the likely outcome had the Edelman plaintiffs sued the directors of the Illinois Department of Public Aid in their personal capacity for retroactive benefits wrongly withheld? Does Section 1983 afford any remedy for past deprivations of constitutional rights that are inflicted by officials of state government pursuant to the policy or custom of the state?
|
Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer |
Mr. Justice Rehnquist delivered the opinion of the Court.
In the 1972 Amendments to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Congress, acting under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, authorized federal courts to award money damages in favor of a private individual against a state government found to have subjected that person to employment discrimination on the basis of "race, color, religion, sex, or national origin." The principal question presented by these cases is whether, as against the shield of sovereign immunity afforded the State by the Eleventh Amendment, Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651 (1974), Congress has the power to authorize federal courts to enter such an award against the State as a means of enforcing the substantive guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that the effect of our decision in Edelman was to foreclose Congress' power. We granted certiorari to resolve this important constitutional question. 423 U.S. 1031 (1975). We reverse.
I
Petitioners in No. 75-251 sued in the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut on behalf of all present and retired male employees of the State of Connecticut. Their amended complaint asserted, inter alia, that certain provisions in the State's statutory retirement benefit plan discriminated against them because of their sex, and therefore contravened Title VII of the 1964 Act, 78 Stat. 253, as amended, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq. (1970 ed. and Supp. IV). Title VII, which originally did not include state and local governments, had in the interim been amended to bring the States within its purview.
The District Court held that the Connecticut State Employees Retirement Act violated Title VII's prohibition against sex-based employment discrimination. 390 F. Supp. 278, 285-288 (1974).3
On petitioners' appeal, the Court of Appeals affirmed in part and reversed in part. It agreed with the District Court that the action, "insofar as it seeks damages, is in essence against the state and as such is subject to the Eleventh Amendment." 519 F. 2d 559, 565 (1975). The Court of Appeals also found that under the 1972 Amendments to Title VII, "Congress intended to authorize a private suit for backpay by state employees against the state." Id., at 568. Notwithstanding this statutory authority, the Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court and held that under Edelman a "private federal action for retroactive damages" is not a "constitutionally permissible method of enforcing Fourteenth Amendment rights." 519 F.2d, at 569. It reversed the District Court and remanded as to attorneys' fees, however, reasoning that such an award would have only an "ancillary effect" on the state treasury of the kind permitted under Edelman, supra, at 667-668. 519 F. 2d, at 571. The petition filed here by the state employees in No. 75-251 contends that Congress does possess the constitutional power under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to authorize their Title VII damages action against the State. The state officials' cross-petition, No. 75-283, argues that under Edelman the Eleventh Amendment bars any award of attorneys' fees here because it would be paid out of the state treasury.
II
In Edelman this Court held that monetary relief awarded by the District Court to welfare plaintiffs, by reason of wrongful denial of benefits which had occurred previous to the entry of the District Court's determination of their wrongfulness, violated the Eleventh Amendment. Such an award was found to be indistinguishable from a monetary award against the State itself which had been prohibited in Ford Motor Co. v. Department of Treasury
Edelman went on to hold that the plaintiffs in that case could not avail themselves of the doctrine of waiver expounded in cases such as Parden v. Terminal R. Co.
All parties in the instant litigation agree with the Court of Appeals that the suit for retroactive benefits by the petitioners is in fact indistinguishable from that sought to be maintained in Edelman, since what is sought here is a damages award payable to a private party from the state treasury.8
Our analysis begins where Edelman ended, for in this Title VII case the "threshold fact of congressional authorization," id., at 672, to sue the State as employer is clearly present. This is, of course, the prerequisite found present in Parden and wanting in Employees. We are aware of the factual differences between the type of state activity involved in Parden and that involved in the present case, but we do not think that difference is material for our purposes. The congressional authorization involved in Parden was based on the power of Congress under the Commerce Clause; here, however, the Eleventh Amendment defense is asserted in the context of legislation passed pursuant to Congress' authority under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment.
As ratified by the States after the Civil War, that Amendment quite clearly contemplates limitations on their authority. In relevant part, it provides:
"Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article."
The substantive provisions are by express terms directed at the States. Impressed upon them by those provisions are duties with respect to their treatment of private individuals. Standing behind the imperatives is Congress' power to "enforce" them "by appropriate legislation."
The impact of the Fourteenth Amendment upon the relationship between the Federal Government and the States, and the reach of congressional power under § 5, were examined at length by this Court in Ex parte Virginia
"The argument in support of the petition for a habeas corpus ignores entirely the power conferred upon Congress by the Fourteenth Amendment. Were it not for the fifth section of that amendment, there might be room for argument that the first section is only declaratory of the moral duty of the State.... But the Constitution now expressly gives authority for congressional interference and compulsion in the cases embraced within the Fourteenth Amendment. It is but a limited authority, true, extending only to a single class of cases; but within its limits it is complete." Id., at 346-348.
Ex parte Virginia's early recognition of this shift in the federal-state balance has been carried forward by more recent decisions of this Court. See, e.g., South Carolina v. Katzenbach
There can be no doubt that this line of cases has sanctioned intrusions by Congress, acting under the Civil War Amendments, into the judicial, executive, and legislative spheres of autonomy previously reserved to the States. The legislation considered in each case was grounded on the expansion of Congress' powers - with the corresponding diminution of state sovereignty - found to be intended by the Framers and made part of the Constitution upon the States' ratification of those Amendments, a phenomenon aptly described as a "carv[ing] out" in Ex parte Virginia, supra, at 346.
It is true that none of these previous cases presented the question of the relationship between the Eleventh Amendment and the enforcement power granted to Congress under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. But we think that the Eleventh Amendment, and the principle of state sovereignty which it embodies, see Hans v. Louisiana
III
In No. 75-283, the state officials contest the Court of Appeals' conclusion that an award of attorneys' fees in this case would under Edelman have only an "ancillary effect" on the state treasury and could therefore be permitted as falling outside the Eleventh Amendment under the doctrine of Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123 (1908). 415 U.S., at 667-668. We need not address this question, since, given the express congressional authority for such an award in a case brought under Title VII, it follows necessarily from our holding in No. 75-251 that Congress' exercise of power in this respect is also not barred by the Eleventh Amendment. We therefore affirm the Court of Appeals' judgment in No. 75-283 on this basis.
The judgment in No. 75-251 is
Reversed.
The judgment in No. 75-283 is
Affirmed.
Mr. Justice Brennan, concurring in the judgment.
This suit was brought by present and retired employees of the State of Connecticut against the State Treasurer, the State Comptroller, and the Chairman of the State Employees' Retirement Commission. In that circumstance, Connecticut may not invoke the Eleventh Amendment, since that Amendment bars only federal-court suits against States by citizens of other States. Rather, the question is whether Connecticut may avail itself of the nonconstitutional but ancient doctrine of sovereign immunity as a bar to a claim for damages under Title VII. In my view Connecticut may not assert sovereign immunity for the reason I expressed in dissent in Employees v. Missouri Public Health Dept.
I therefore concur in the judgment of the Court.
Mr. Justice Stevens, concurring in the judgment.
In my opinion the commerce power is broad enough to support federal legislation regulating the terms and conditions of state employment and, therefore, provides the necessary support for the 1972 Amendments to Title VII, even though Congress expressly relied on § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. But I do not believe plaintiffs proved a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, and because I am not sure that the 1972 Amendments were "needed to secure the guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment," see Katzenbach v. Morgan
Even if the Eleventh Amendment does cover a citizen's suit against his own State, it does not bar an action against state officers enforcing an invalid statute, Ex Parte Young, 209 U.S. 123, 159-160. Since the Connecticut pension law has been held to be invalid, at least in part, Ex parte Young makes it clear that the federal court properly acquired jurisdiction of the proceeding.
The Eleventh Amendment issue presented is whether the court has power to enter a judgment payable immediately out of trust assets which subsequently would be reimbursed from the general revenues of the State. Although I have great difficulty with a construction of the Eleventh Amendment which acknowledges the federal court's jurisdiction of a case and merely restricts the kind of relief the federal court may grant, I must recognize that it has been so construed in Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651, and that the language of that opinion would seem to cover this case. However, its actual holding appears to be limited to the situation in which the award is payable directly from state funds and "not as a necessary consequence of compliance in the future" with a substantive determination. Id., at 668.
The holding in Edelman does not necessarily require the same result in this case; this award will not be paid directly from the state treasury, but rather from two separate and independent pension funds. The fact that the State will have to increase its future payments into the funds as a consequence of this award does not, in my opinion, sufficiently distinguish this case from other cases in which a State may be required to conform its practices to the Federal Constitution and thereby to incur additional expense in the future. Since the rationale of Ex parteYoung remains applicable to such cases, and since this case is not squarely covered by the holding in Edelman, I am persuaded that it is proper to reject the Eleventh Amendment defense.
With respect to the fee issue, even if the Eleventh Amendment were applicable, I would place fees in the same category as other litigation costs. Cf. Fairmont Co. v. Minnesota
It entered prospective injunctive relief in petitioners' favor against respondent state officials.4 Petitioners also sought an award of retroactive retirement benefits as compensation for losses caused by the State's discrimination, as well as "a reasonable attorney's fee as part of the costs." But the District Court held that both would constitute recovery of money damages from the State's treasury, and were therefore precluded by the Eleventh Amendment and by this Court's decision in Edelman v. Jordan, supra.
, 323 U.S. 459, 464 (1945). It was therefore controlled by that case rather than by Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123 (1908), which permitted suits against state officials to obtain prospective relief against violations of the Fourteenth Amendment.
, 377 U.S. 184 (1964), and Employees v. Missouri Public Health Dept., 411 U.S. 279 (1973), because the necessary predicate for that doctrine was congressional intent to abrogate the immunity conferred by the Eleventh Amendment. We concluded that none of the statutes relied upon by plaintiffs in Edelman contained any authorization by Congress to join a State as defendant. The Civil Rights Act of 1871, 42 U.S.C. § 1983, had been held in Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167, 187-191 (1961), to exclude cities and other municipal corporations from its ambit; that being the case, it could not have been intended to include States as parties defendant. The provisions of the Social Security Act relied upon by plaintiffs were held by their terms not to "authorize suit against anyone," 415 U.S., at 674, and they, too, were incapable of supplying the predicate for a claim of waiver on the part of the State.
"Section 1.... No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
, 100 U.S. 339 (1880). A state judge had been arrested and indicted under a federal criminal statute prohibiting the exclusion on the basis of race of any citizen from service as a juror in a state court. The judge claimed that the statute was beyond Congress' power to enact under either the Thirteenth or the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court first observed that these Amendments "were intended to be, what they really are, limitations of the power of the States and enlargements of the power of Congress." Id., at 345. It then addressed the relationship between the language of § 5 and the substantive provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment:
"The prohibitions of the Fourteenth Amendment are directed to the States, and they are to a degree restrictions of State power. It is these which Congress is empowered to enforce, and to enforce against State action, however put forth, whether that action be executive, legislative, or judicial. Such enforcement is no invasion of State sovereignty. No law can be, which the people of the States have, by the Constitution of the United States, empowered Congress to enact.... It is said the selection of jurors for her courts and the administration of her laws belong to each State; that they are her rights. This is true in the general. But in exercising her rights, a State cannot disregard the limitations which the Federal Constitution has applied to her power. Her rights do not reach to that extent. Nor can she deny to the general government the right to exercise all its granted powers, though they may interfere with the full enjoyment of rights she would have if those powers had not been thus granted. Indeed, every addition of power to the general government involves a corresponding diminution of the governmental powers of the States. It is carved out of them.
, 383 U.S. 301, 308 (1966); Mitchum v. Foster, 407 U.S. 225, 238-239 (1972).
, 134 U.S. 1 (1890), are necessarily limited by the enforcement provisions of § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. In that section Congress is expressly granted authority to enforce "by appropriate legislation" the substantive provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment, which themselves embody significant limitations on state authority. When Congress acts pursuant to § 5, not only is it exercising legislative authority that is plenary within the terms of the constitutional grant, it is exercising that authority under one section of a constitutional Amendment whose other sections by their own terms embody limitations on state authority. We think that Congress may, in determining what is "appropriate legislation" for the purpose of enforcing the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment, provide for private suits against States or state officials which are constitutionally impermissible in other contexts.11 See Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651 (1974); Ford Motor Co. v. Department of Treasury, 323 U.S. 459 (1945).
, 411 U.S. 279, 298 (1973): The States surrendered that immunity, in Hamilton's words, "in the plan of the Convention" that formed the Union, at least insofar as the States granted Congress specifically enumerated powers. See id., at 319 n. 7; Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651, 687 (1974) (Brennan, J., dissenting); Parden v. Terminal R. Co., 377 U.S. 184 (1964). Congressional authority to enact the provisions of Title VII at issue in this case is found in the Commerce Clause, Art. I, § 8, cl. 3, and in § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, two of the enumerated powers granted Congress in the Constitution. Cf. Oregon v. Mitchell, 400 U.S. 112, 131-134 (1970) (Black, J.); id., at 135-150 (Douglas, J.); id., at 216-217 (Harlan, J.); id., at 236-281 (Brennan, White, and Marshall, JJ.); id., at 282-284 (Stewart, J.); Katzenbach v. Morgan, 384 U.S. 641, 651 (1966). I remain of the opinion that "because of its surrender, no immunity exists that can be the subject of a congressional declaration or a voluntary waiver." Employees v. Missouri Public Health Dept., supra, at 300.
, 384 U.S. 641, 651, I question whether § 5 of that Amendment is an adequate reply to Connecticut's Eleventh Amendment defense. I believe the defense should be rejected for a different reason.
, 275 U.S. 70.
Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer Transcript |
|
, 517 U.S. 44 (1996), the Supreme Court held that Congress lacks the power under the Commerce Clause and Indian Commerce Clause to override the States' Eleventh Amendment immunity. However, the Court in dicta reaffirmed that Congress is empowered to abrogate the Eleventh Amendment immunity when it acts pursuant to Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment:
[O]ur inquiry into whether Congress has the power to abrogate unilaterally the States' immunity from suit is narrowly focused on one question: Was the Act in question passed pursuant to a constitutional provision granting Congress the power to abrogate? . . . . In Fitzpatrick, we recognized that the Fourteenth Amendment, by expanding federal power at the expense of state autonomy, had fundamentally altered the balance of state and federal power struck by the Constitution . . . . We held that through the Fourteenth Amendment, federal power extended to intrude upon the province of the Eleventh Amendment and therefore § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment allowed Congress to abrogate the immunity from suit guaranteed by that Amendment.Seminole Tribe
* * * * * Fitzpatrick was based on a rationale wholly inapplicable to the Interstate Commerce Clause, viz., that the Fourteenth Amendment, adopted well after the adoption of the Eleventh Amendment and the ratification of the Constitution, operated to alter the pre-existing balance between state and federal power achieved by Article III and the Eleventh Amendment . . . . Fitzpatrick cannot be read to justify "limitation of the principle embodied in the Eleventh Amendment through appeal to antecedent provisions of the Constitution."
, 517 U.S. at 59, 65-66.
, 527 U.S. 627 (1999), the Court in a 5-4 decision held that Congress acted beyond its power under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment when it passed the Patent and Plant Variety Protection Remedy Clarification Act, 35 U.S.C. § 271(h) ("Any State, any instrumentality of a State, and any officer or employee of a State or instrumentality of a State acting in his official capacity, shall not be immune, under the eleventh amendment of the Constitution of the United States or under any other doctrine of sovereign immunity, from suit in Federal court by any person . . . for infringement of a patent under section 271, or for any other violation of this title. which extended the reach of federal patent laws to the states.").
In order to act within its enforcement powers under Section 5, the Court reasoned, Congress "must identify conduct transgressing the Fourteenth Amendment's substantive provisions, and must tailor its legislative scheme to remedying or preventing such conduct." Id. at 639; City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507, 519-20 (1997). The Court found that the evil that Congress sought to remedy was the infringement of patents by the States coupled with the assertion of sovereign immunity to deny compensation in state court to patent holders. However, the legislative record was bereft of evidence of any pattern of patent infringement by the States. Furthermore, under Parratt v. Taylor and its progeny, state deprivation of a patent would not constitute a violation of the Constitution if the state provided an adequate post-deprivation remedy. Just as the legislative record did not sustain widespread infringement of patents by states, Congress did not find that state remedies for infringement were inadequate. Finally, to transgress constitutional bounds, a state must act recklessly or with the intent to deprive the patent holder of property. See Daniels v. Williams, 474 U.S. 327 (1986). The evidence before Congress, however, suggested that the few instances of state infringement of patents were innocent or at worst negligent and hence not violative of the Fourteenth Amendment. Therefore, the Court concluded, Congress acted beyond its power to enforce the constraints of Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The legislative record thus suggests that the Patent Remedy Act does not respond to a history of "widespread and persistent deprivation of constitutional rights" of the sort Congress has faced in enacting proper prophylactic § 5 legislation. . . .Though the lack of support in the legislative record is not determinative. . . identifying the targeted constitutional wrong or evil is still a critical part of our § 5 calculus because "[s]trong measures appropriate to address one harm may be an unwarranted response to another lesser one.". . . Here the record at best offers scant support for Congress' conclusion that States were depriving patent owners of property without due process of law by pleading sovereign immunity in federal-court patent actions.Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Education Expense BoardBecause of this lack, the provisions of the Patent Remedy Act are "so out of proportion to a supposed remedial or preventive object that [they] cannot be understood as responsive to, or designed to prevent, unconstitutional behavior. . . . Congress did nothing to limit the coverage of the Act to cases involving arguable constitutional violations, such as where a State refuses to offer any state-court remedy for patent owners whose patents it had infringed. Nor did it make any attempt to confine the reach of the Act by limiting the remedy to certain types of infringement, such as nonnegligent infringement or infringement authorized pursuant to state policy; or providing for suits only against States with questionable remedies or a high incidence of infringement.
* * * * * The statute's apparent and more basic aims were to provide a uniform remedy for patent infringement and to place States on the same footing as private parties under that regime. These are proper Article I concerns, but that Article does not give Congress the power to enact such legislation after Seminole Tribe.
, 527 U.S. at 645-48.
In a companion case, the Court likewise held that Congress exceeded its Section 5 power when it enacted the Trademark Remedy Clarification Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1122, which subjected the States to suits under the Lanham Act for false and misleading advertising. College Savings Bank v. Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Education Expense Board, 527 U.S. 666 (1999). The Court determined that the wrongs remedied by the Act — incursions of the right to be free from a business competitor's false advertising and the right to be secure in one's business interests–were not property rights protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Accordingly, the Trademark Remedy Clarification Act fell outside Congress' "power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of [Section 1 of the fourteenth amendment]." U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 5.
, 528 U.S. 62 (2000), the Court struck down the 1974 amendments to the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA) that extended the Act's substantive requirements to the States. ("The term [employer] also means. . . . a State or political subdivision of a State and any agency or instrumentality of a State or political subdivision of a State. . . . " 29 U.S.C. § 630(b)). While accepting that Congress intended to abrogate the States' Eleventh Amendment immunity, the Court held that Congress exceeded its Section 5 power by imposing substantive proscriptions against age discrimination that surpassed the prohibitions of the Equal Protection Clause of Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Because age is not a suspect classification under the Constitution, States are permitted to discriminate on the basis of age so long as the classification is rationally related to a legitimate state interest. The ADEA, however, demands that the state justify any discrimination on the basis of age by what is tantamount to heightened scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause. Because there was little evidence in the legislative record that state governments were engaged in widespread unconstitutional discrimination, the Court concluded that the ADEA was not an effort to design an appropriate remedy for violations of the Equal Protection Clause but instead was "[m]erely an attempt to substantively redefine the States' legal obligations with respect to age discrimination." Kimel, 528 U.S. at 88.
Justice Stevens, joined by Justices Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer, filed a vigorous dissent to the Court's rigorous scrutiny of the exercise of Congress' Section 5 power:
In my opinion, Congress' power to authorize federal remedies against state agencies that violate federal statutory obligations is coextensive with its power to impose those obligations on the State in the first place. . . . The application of the ancient judge-made doctrine of sovereign immunity in cases like these is supposedly justified as a freestanding limit on congressional authority, a limit necessary to protect the States' "dignity and respect" from impairment by the National Government. The Framers did not, however, select the Judicial Branch as the constitutional guardian of those state interests. Rather, the Framers designed important structural safeguards to ensure that when the National Government enacted substantive law (and provided for its enforcement), the normal operation of the legislative process itself would adequately defend state interests from undue infringement. . . .KimelIt is the Framers' compromise giving each State equal representation in the Senate that provides the principal structural protection for the sovereignty of the several States. . . . [W]e can safely assume that the burdens the statute imposes on the sovereignty of the several States were taken into account during the deliberative process leading to the enactment of the measure. Those burdens necessarily include the cost of defending against enforcement proceedings and paying whatever penalties might be incurred for violating the statute. . . . The importance of respecting the Framers' decision to assign the business of lawmaking to the Congress dictates firm resistance to the present majority's repeated substitution of its own views of federalism for those expressed in statutes enacted by Congress and signed by the President.
, 528 U.S. at 93 (Stevens, J. dissenting).
The dissenters further disagreed with the majority's construction of the Eleventh Amendment:
[T]he Amendment only places a textual limitation on the diversity jurisdiction of the federal courts. . . . Here, however, private petitioners did not invoke the federal court's diversity jurisdiction; they are citizens of the same State as the defendants and they are asserting claims that arise under federal law. Thus, today's decision . . . rests entirely on a novel judicial interpretation of the doctrine of sovereign immunity, which the Court treats as if it were a constitutional precept.Kimel
, 528 U.S. at 95-96 (Stevens, J. dissenting).
In Hutto v. Finney, 437 U.S. 678 (1978), the Court considered whether Congress intended to exert its Fourteenth Amendment power and abrogate the States' Eleventh Amendment immunity when it enacted the Attorneys' Fees Award Act of 1976. ("In any action or proceeding to enforce a provision of [42 U.S.C. § 1983] . . . the court, in its discretion, may allow the prevailing party, other than the United States, a reasonable attorney's fee as part of the costs." 42 U.S. C. § 1988.) Despite the fact that the language of the statute makes no express reference to States, the Court held that Congress intended to authorize attorney fee awards to be paid by the States when state officers are sued in their official capacities for prospective relief.
Justice Brennan authored a concurring opinion solely to respond to points made by Justice Powell's dissent as to the Eleventh Amendment issue:
Mr. Justice Powell takes the view, however, that unless 42 U.S.C. §1983 also authorizes damage awards against the States, the requirements of the Eleventh Amendment are not met. Citing Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651 (1974), he concludes that § 1983 does not authorize damage awards against the State and, accordingly, that §1988 does not either. There are a number of difficulties with this syllogism, but the most striking is its reliance on Edelman v. Jordan, a case whose foundations would seem to have been seriously undermined by our later holdings in Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer . . . and Monell v. New York City Dept. of Social Services.Hutto, 437 U.S. at 700-703 (Brennan, J. concurring).
* * * * * Given our holding in Monell, the essential premise of our Edelman holding–that no statute involved in Edelman authorized suit against a "class of defendants which literally included states"–would clearly appear to be no longer true. Moreover, given Fitzpatrick's holding that Congress has plenary power to make States liable in damages when it acts pursuant to §5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, it is surely at least an open question whether §1983 properly construed does not make States liable for relief of all kinds, notwithstanding the Eleventh Amendment.
|
State of Alabama v. Pugh |
Per Curiam
Respondents, inmates or former inmates of the Alabama prison system, sued petitioners, who include the State of Alabama and the Alabama Board of Corrections as well as a number of Alabama officials responsible for the administration of its prisons, alleging that conditions in Alabama prisons constituted cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. The United States District Court agreed and issued an order prescribing measures designed to eradicate cruel and unusual punishment in the Alabama prison system. The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed but modified some aspects of the order which it believed exceeded the limits of the appropriate exercise of the court's remedial powers. 559 F.2d 283.
Among the claims raised here by petitioners is that the issuance of a mandatory injunction against the State of Alabama and the Alabama Board of Corrections is unconstitutional because the Eleventh Amendment prohibits federal courts from entertaining suits by private parties against States and their agencies. The Court of Appeals did not address this contention, perhaps because it was of the view that in light of the numerous individual defendants in the case dismissal as to these two defendants would not affect the scope of the injunction. There can be no doubt, however, that suit against the State and its Board of Corrections is barred by the Eleventh Amendment, unless Alabama has consented to the filing of such a suit. Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651 (1974); Ford Motor Co. v. Department of Treasury
So ordered.
Mr. Justice Stevens, dissenting.
This Court is much too busy to spend its time correcting harmless errors. Nothing more is accomplished by the summary action it takes today.1
The Court does not question the propriety of the injunctive relief entered by the District Court and upheld by the Court of Appeals. Striking the State's name from the list of parties will have no impact on the effectiveness of that relief. If the state officers disobey the injunction, financial penalties may be imposed on the responsible state agencies. Hutto v. Finney, 323 U.S. 459 (1945); Worcester County Trust Co. v. Riley, 302 U.S. 292 (1937). Respondents do not contend that Alabama has consented to this suit, and it appears that no consent could be given under Art. I, § 14, of the Alabama Constitution, which provides that "the State of Alabama shall never be made a defendant in any court of law or equity." Moreover, the question of the State's Eleventh Amendment immunity is not merely academic. Alabama has an interest in being dismissed from this action in order to eliminate the danger of being held in contempt if it should fail to comply with the mandatory injunction.12 Consequently, we grant the petition for certiorari limited to Question 2 presented by petitioners,13 reverse the judgment in part, and remand the case to the Court of Appeals with instructions to order the dismissal of the State of Alabama and the Alabama Board of Corrections from this action.
, 437 U.S. 678. The District Court's asserted error did not trouble the Court of Appeals because it has no practical significance. It does not justify the exercise of this Court's certiorari jurisdiction. I respectfully dissent.
|
, 437 U.S. 678 (1978) held that the Eleventh Amendment does not bar an award of attorneys' fees arising out of defendant state officials' bad faith failure to comply with the district court's injunctive decrees. Although the plaintiffs in Hutto had sued the Commissioner of Correction and members of the Alabama Department of Correction in their official capacities for injunctive relief, the district court directed that the fees were "‘to be paid out of Department of Correction funds.'" Hutto, 437 U.S. at 692.
The Supreme Court dismissed the Attorney General's contention that the order should not have been directed against the Department of Correction:
Although the Attorney General objects to the form of the order, no useful purpose would be served by requiring that it be recast in different language. We have previously approved directives that were comparable in their actual impact on the State without pausing to attach significance to the language used by the District Court. Even if it might have been better form to omit the reference to the Department of Correction, the use of that language is surely not reversible error.Hutto, 437 U.S. at 692-93. Why, then, did the Court grant certiorari and reverse the lower court's order in Pugh?
|
Quern v. Jordan |
Mr. Justice Rehnquist delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case is a sequel to Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651 (1974), which we decided five Terms ago. In Edelman we held that retroactive welfare benefits awarded by a Federal District Court to plaintiffs, by reason of wrongful denial of benefits by state officials prior to the entry of the court's order determining the wrongfulness of their actions, violated the Eleventh Amendment. The issue now before us is whether that same federal court may, consistent with the Eleventh Amendment, order those state officials to send a mere explanatory notice to members of the plaintiff class advising them that there are state administrative procedures available by which they may receive a determination of whether they are entitled to past welfare benefits.
Petitioner state official devotes a significant part of his brief to an attack on the proposed notice which the District Court required the state officials to send. It is, however, the decision of the Court of Appeals, and not that of the District Court, which we review at the behest of petitioner. And just as petitioner insists on tilting at windmills by attacking the District Court's decision, respondent suggests that our decision in Edelman has been eviscerated by later decisions such as Monell v. New York City Dept. of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658 (1978). Brief for Respondent 55 n. 37. See also Aldridge v. Turlington, No. TCA-78-830 (ND Fla., Nov. 17, 1978); but see Skehan v. Board of Trustees of Bloomsburg State College, 590 F.2d 470 (CA3 1978). As we have noted above, we held in Edelman that in "a [42 U. S. C.] § 1983 action . . . a federal court's remedial power, consistent with the Eleventh Amendment, is necessarily limited to prospective injunctive relief, Ex parte Young, supra, and may not include a retroactive award which requires the payment of funds from the state treasury, Ford Motor Co. v. Department of Treasury
While the separate opinions in Hutto v. Finney, supra,8
The decision in Pugh was consistent both with Monell, which was limited to "local government units," 436 U.S., at 690 n. 54, and with Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, supra. In the latter case we found that "'threshold fact of congressional authorization,'" which had been lacking in Edelman, to be present in the express language of the congressional amendment making Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 applicable to state and local governments. 427 U.S., at 452, quoting Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S., at 672.
Mr. Justice Brennan in his opinion concurring in the judgment argues that our holding in Edelman that § 1983 does not abrogate the States' Eleventh Amendment immunity is "most likely incorrect." Post, at 354. To reach this conclusion he relies on "[assumptions]" drawn from the Fourteenth Amendment, post, at 355, on "occasional remarks" found in a legislative history that contains little debate on § 1 of the Civil Rights Act of 1871, 17 Stat. 13, the precursor to § 1983, post, at 358 n. 15, on the reference to "bodies politic" in the Act of Feb. 25, 1871, 16 Stat. 431, the "Dictionary Act," post, at 355-357,11
There is no question that both the supporters and opponents of the Civil Rights Act of 1871 believed that the Act ceded to the Federal Government many important powers that previously had been considered to be within the exclusive province of the individual States. Many of the remarks from the legislative history of the Act quoted in Mr. Justice Brennan's opinion amply demonstrate this point. Post, at 359-365. See also Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167, 173-176 (1961). But neither logic, the circumstances surrounding the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, nor the legislative history of the 1871 Act compels, or even warrants, a leap from this proposition to the conclusion that Congress intended by the general language of the Act to overturn the constitutionally guaranteed immunity of the several States. In Tenney v. Brandhove
Given the importance of the States' traditional sovereign immunity, if in fact the Members of the 42d Congress believed that § 1 of the 1871 Act overrode that immunity, surely there would have been lengthy debate on this point and it would have been paraded out by the opponents of the Act along with the other evils that they thought would result from the Act. Instead, § 1 passed with only limited debate and not one Member of Congress mentioned the Eleventh Amendment or the direct financial consequences to the States of enacting § 1. We can only conclude that this silence on the matter is itself a significant indication of the legislative intent of § 1.
Our cases consistently have required a clearer showing of congressional purpose to abrogate Eleventh Amendment immunity than our Brother Brennan is able to marshal. In Employees v. Missouri Public Health Dept.
We turn, then, to the question which has caused disagreement between the Courts of Appeals: does the modified notice contemplated by the Seventh Circuit constitute permissible prospective relief or a "retroactive award which requires the payment of funds from the state treasury"? We think this relief falls on the Ex parte Young side of the Eleventh Amendment line rather than on the Edelman side. Petitioner makes no issue of the incidental administrative expense connected with preparing and mailing the notice. Instead, he argues that giving the proposed notice will lead inexorably to the payment of state funds for retroactive benefits and therefore it, in effect, amounts to a monetary award. But the chain of causation which petitioner seeks to establish is by no means unbroken; it contains numerous missing links, which can be supplied, if at all, only by the State and members of the plaintiff class and not by a federal court. The notice approved by the Court of Appeals simply apprises plaintiff class members of the existence of whatever administrative procedures may already be available under state law by which they may receive a determination of eligibility for past benefits. The notice of appeal, we are told, is virtually identical to the notice sent by the Department of Public Aid in every case of a denial or reduction of benefits. The mere sending of that notice does not trigger the state administrative machinery. Whether a recipient of notice decides to take advantage of those available state procedures is left completely to the discretion of that particular class member; the federal court plays no role in that decision. And whether or not the class member will receive retroactive benefits rests entirely with the State, its agencies, courts, and legislature, not with the federal court.
The notice approved by the Court of Appeals, unlike that ordered by the District Court, is more properly viewed as ancillary to the prospective relief already ordered by the court. See Milliken v. Bradley, 433 U.S., at 290. The notice in effect simply informs class members that their federal suit is at an end, that the federal court can provide them with no further relief, and that there are existing state administrative procedures which they may wish to pursue. Petitioner raises no objection to the expense of preparing or sending it. The class members are "given no more . . . than what they would have gathered by sitting in the courtroom." Jordan v. Trainor, 563 F.2d, at 877-878. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is therefore
For the reasons set forth in my dissent in Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651, 687 (1974), I concur in the judgment of the Court.
I
It is deeply disturbing, however, that the Court should engage in today's gratuitous departure from customary judicial practice and reach out to decide an issue unnecessary to its holding. The Court today correctly rules that the explanatory notice approved by the Court of Appeals below is "properly viewed as ancillary to . . . prospective relief." Ante, at 349. This is sufficient to sustain the Court's holding that such notice is not barred by the Eleventh Amendment. But the Court goes on to conclude, in what is patently dicta, that a State is not a "person" for purposes of 42 U. S. C. § 1983, Rev. Stat. § 1979.
This conclusion is significant because, only three Terms ago, Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, 427 U.S. 445 (1976), held that "Congress may, in determining what is 'appropriate legislation' for the purpose of enforcing the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment, provide for private suits against States or state officials which are constitutionally impermissible in other contexts." Id., at 456. If a State were a "person" for purposes of § 1983, therefore, its immunity under the Eleventh Amendment would be abrogated by the statute. Edelman v. Jordan, supra, had held that § 1983 did not override state immunity, for the reason, as the Court later stated in Fitzpatrick, that "[the] Civil Rights Act of 1871, 42 U. S. C. § 1983, had been held in Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167, 187-191 (1961), to exclude cities and other municipal corporations from its ambit; that being the case, it could not have been intended to include States as parties defendant." 427 U.S., at 452. The premise of this reasoning was undercut last Term, however, when Monell v. New York City Dept. of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658 (1978), upon re-examination of the legislative history of § 1983, held that a municipality was indeed a "person" for purposes of that statute. As I stated in my concurrence in Hutto v. Finney
The Court's dicta today would close that open question on the basis of Alabama v. Pugh, 438 U.S. 781 (1978). In that case the State of Alabama had been named as a party defendant in a suit alleging unconstitutional conditions of confinement. The question presented was "[whether] the mandatory injunction issued against the State of Alabama and the Alabama Board of Corrections violates the State's Eleventh Amendment immunity or exceeds the jurisdiction granted federal courts by 42 U. S. C. § 1983." Id., at 782-783, n. 2. The Court held that the State should not have been named as a party defendant.
Pugh, however, does not stand for the proposition that a State is not a "person" for purposes of § 1983. Not only does the Court's opinion in that case fail even to mention § 1983, it frames the issue addressed as whether Alabama had "consented to the filing of such a suit." 438 U.S., at 782. Since Alabama's consent would have been irrelevant if Congress had intended States to be encompassed within the reach of § 1983, the Court apparently decided the first half of the question presented -- "[whether] the mandatory injunction issued against the State of Alabama . . . violates the State's Eleventh Amendment immunity" -- without considering or deciding the second half -- whether the mandatory injunction "exceeds the jurisdiction granted federal courts by 42 U. S. C. § 1983."6
This parsing of Pugh is strengthened by a consideration of the circumstances surrounding that decision. Pugh, a short per curiam, was issued on the last day of the Term without the assistance of briefs on the merits or argument. Alabama's petition for certiorari and respondents' brief in opposition were filed on February 6, 1978, and April 6, 1978, respectively, months before Monell was announced. They were thus necessarily without the benefit of Monell's major re-evaluation of the legislative history of § 1983.7
The Court's reliance on Pugh is particularly significant because the question whether a State is a "person" for purposes of § 1983 is neither briefed nor argued by the parties in the instant case. Indeed, petitioner states flatly that "the en banc decision of the Seventh Circuit does not rest upon a conclusion that the term 'person' for purposes of § 1983 includes sovereign states, as opposed to state officials, within its ambit. That issue is not the issue before this Court on Petitioner's Writ for Certiorari." Reply Brief for Petitioner 14. Respondent concurs, stating that "it is unnecessary in this case to confront directly the far-reaching question of whether Congress intended in § 1983 to provide for relief directly against States, as it did against municipalities." Brief for Respondent 55 n. 37.
Thus, the Court today decides a question of major significance without ever having had the assistance of a considered presentation of the issue, either in briefs or in arguments. The result is pure judicial fiat.
II
This fiat is particularly disturbing because it is most likely incorrect. Section 1983 was originally enacted as § 1 of the Civil Rights Act of 1871. The Act was enacted for the purpose of enforcing the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment. That Amendment exemplifies the "vast transformation" worked on the structure of federalism in this Nation by the Civil War.
The prohibitions of the Fourteenth Amendment and Congress' power of enforcement are thus directed at the States themselves, not merely at state officers. It is logical to assume, therefore, that § 1983, in effectuating the provisions of the Amendment by "[interposing] the federal courts between the States and the people, as guardians of the people's federal rights," Mitchum v. Foster, supra, at 242, is also addressed to the States themselves. Certainly Congress made this intent plain enough on the face of the statute.
Section 1 of the Civil Rights Act of 1871 created a federal cause of action against "any person" who, "under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage of any State," deprived another of "any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution of the United States." On February 25, 1871, less than two months before the enactment of the Civil Rights Act, Congress provided that "in all acts hereafter passed . . . the word 'person' may extend and be applied to bodies politic and corporate . . . unless the context shows that such words were intended to be used in a more limited sense."11
Indeed, during the very debates surrounding the enactment of the Civil Rights Act, States were referred to as bodies politic and corporate. See, e. g., Cong. Globe, 42d Cong., 1st Sess., 661-662 (1871) (hereinafter Globe) (Sen. Vickers) ("What is a State? Is it not a body politic and corporate?"); cf. id., at 696 (Sen. Edmunds). Thus the expressed intent of Congress, manifested virtually simultaneously with the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1871, was that the States themselves, as bodies corporate and politic, should be embraced by the term "person" in § 1 of that Act.
The legislative history of the Civil Rights Act of 1871 reinforces this conclusion. The Act was originally reported to the House as H. R. 320 by Representative Shellabarger. At that time Representative Shellabarger stated that the bill was meant to be remedial "in aid of the preservation of human liberty and human rights," and thus to be "liberally and beneficently construed."13
"Why not in advance provide against the denial of rights by States, whether the denial be acts of omission or commission, as well as against the unlawful acts of combinations and conspiracies against the rights of the people?
"The States never had the right, though they had the power, to inflict wrongs upon free citizens by a denial of the full protection of the laws; because all State officials are by the Constitution required to be bound by oath or affirmation to support the Constitution. As I have already said, the States did deny to citizens the equal protection of the laws, they did deny the rights of citizens under the Constitution, and except to the extent of the express limitations upon the States, as I have shown, the citizen had no remedy. . . . They took property without compensation, and he had no remedy. They restricted the freedom of the press, and he had no remedy. They restricted the freedom of speech, and he had no remedy. They restricted the rights of conscience, and he had no remedy. They bought and sold men who had no remedy. Who dare say, now that the Constitution has been amended, that the nation cannot by law provide against all such abuses and denials of right as these in States and by States, or combination of persons?" Globe App. 83, 85 (emphasis added).17
H. R. 320 was necessary, as Senator Edmunds stated, to protect citizens "in the rights that the Constitution gave them . . . against any assault by any State or under any State or through the neglect of any State . . . . ," Globe 697, and by a "State," Edmunds meant "a corporation . . . an organized thing . . . manifested, represented entirely, and fully in respect to every one of its functions, by that department of its government on which the execution of those functions is respectively devolved." Id., at 696. See id., at 607-608 (Sen. Pool).
It was common ground, therefore, that, as Representative Wilson argued, the prohibitions of the Fourteenth Amendment were directed against the State, meaning "the government of the State. . . the legislative, the judicial, and the executive"; that the fifth section of the Amendment had given Congress the power to enforce it by "appropriate legislation," meaning "legislation adequate to meet the difficulties to be encountered, to suppress the wrongs existing, to furnish remedies and inflict penalties adequate to the suppression of all infractions of the rights of the citizens"; and that H. R. 320 was such legislation. Globe 481-483. Those who opposed the bill were fully aware of the major implications of such a statute. Representative Blair, for example, rested his opposition on the fact that the bill, including § 1, was aimed at the States in their "corporate and legislative capacity":
"As the States have the power to violate them and not individuals, we must presume that the legislation provided for is against the States in their corporate and legislative capacity or character and those acting under their laws, and not against the individuals, as such, of the States. I am sustained in this view of the case by the tenth section of the first article of the Constitution of the United States. In it are a number of inhibitions against the States, which it is evident are against them in their corporate and legislative capacity; and to which I respectfully call the attention of the gentlemen who favor this bill." Globe App. 208.18
See id., at 209. This conclusion produced an anguished outcry from those committed to unrevised notions of state sovereignty. Representative Arthur, for example, complained that § 1
The answer to such arguments was, of course, that the Civil War had irrevocably and profoundly altered the balance of power between Federal and State Governments:
"We must remember that it was State rights, perverted I admit from their true significance, that arrayed themselves against the nation and threatened its existence. We must remember that it was for the very purpose of placing in the General Government a check upon this arrogance of some of the States that the fourteenth amendment was adopted by the people. We must remember that, if the legislation we propose does trench upon what have been, before the fourteenth amendment, considered the rights of the States, it is in behalf and for the protection of immunities and privileges clearly given by the Constitution; and that Federal laws and Federal rights must be protected whether domestic laws or their administration are interfered with or not, because the Constitution and the laws made in pursuance thereof are the supreme law of the land. We are not making a constitution, we are enacting a law, and its virtue can be tested without peril by the experiment." Id., at 502 (Sen. Frelinghuysen).
In the reconstructed union, national rights would be guaranteed federal protection even from the States themselves.
III
The plain words of § 1983, its legislative history and historical context, all evidence that Congress intended States to be embraced within its remedial cause of action. The Court today pronounces its conclusion in dicta by avoiding such evidence. It chooses to hear, in the eloquent and pointed legislative history of § 1983, only "silence." Such silence is in fact deafening to those who have ears to listen. But without reason to reach the question, without briefs, without argument, relying on a precedent that was equally ill-informed and in any event not controlling, the Court resolutely opines that a State is not a "person" for purposes of § 1983. The 42d Congress, of course, can no longer pronounce its meaning with unavoidable clarity. Fitzpatrick, however, cedes to the present Congress the power to rectify this erroneous misinterpretation. It need only make its intention plain.
Mr. Justice Marshall, concurring in the judgment.
I concur in the judgment of the Court, for the reasons expressed in my dissenting opinion in Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651, 688 (1974), and my concurring opinion in Employees v. Missouri Public Health Dept., supra." 415 U.S., at 677. We disagree with respondent's suggestion. This Court's holding in Monell was "limited to local government units which are not considered part of the State for Eleventh Amendment purposes," 436 U.S., at 690 n. 54, and our Eleventh Amendment decisions subsequent to Edelman and to Monell have cast no doubt on our holding in Edelman. See Alabama v. Pugh, 438 U.S. 781 (1978); Hutto v. Finney, 437 U.S. 678 (1978); Milliken v. Bradley, supra; Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, 427 U.S. 445 (1976); Scheuer v. Rhodes, supra.7
debated the continuing soundness of Edelman after our decision in Monell, any doubt on that score was largely dispelled by Alabama v. Pugh, supra, decided just 10 days after Hutto. In Pugh the Court held, over three dissents, that the State of Alabama could not be joined as a defendant without violating the Eleventh Amendment, even though the complaint was based on 42 U. S. C. § 1983 and the claim was a violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments similar to that made in Hutto. The Court said:
"There can be no doubt, however, that suit against the State and its Board of Corrections is barred by the Eleventh Amendment, unless Alabama has consented to the filing of such a suit. Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651 (1974); Ford Motor Co. v. Department of Treasury, 323 U.S. 459 (1945); Worcester County Trust Co. v. Riley, 302 U.S. 292 (1937)." 438 U.S., at 782.9
and, finally on the general language of § 1983 itself, post, at 356. But, unlike our Brother Brennan, we simply are unwilling to believe, on the basis of such slender "evidence," that Congress intended by the general language of § 1983 to override the traditional sovereign immunity of the States. We therefore conclude that neither the reasoning of Monell or of our Eleventh Amendment cases subsequent to Edelman, nor the additional legislative history or arguments set forth in Mr. Justice Brennan's opinion, justify a conclusion different from that which we reached in Edelman.12
, 341 U.S. 367 (1951), the Court rejected a similar attempt to interpret the word "person" in § 1983 as a withdrawal of the historic immunity of state legislators.
, 411 U.S. 279 (1973), the Court concluded that Congress did not lift the sovereign immunity of the States by enacting the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, 29 U. S. C. §§ 201-219, because of the absence of any indication "by clear language that the constitutional immunity was swept away. It is not easy to infer that Congress in legislating pursuant to the Commerce Clause, which has grown to vast proportions in its applications, desired silently to deprive the States of an immunity they have long enjoyed under another part of the Constitution." 411 U.S., at 285. In Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer the Court found present in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e et seq., the "threshold fact of congressional authorization" to sue the State as employer, because the statute made explicit reference to the availability of a private action against state and local governments in the event the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or the Attorney General failed to bring suit or effect a conciliation agreement. 427 U.S., at 448 n. 1, 449 n. 2, 452; see Equal Opportunity Employment Act of 1972, 86 Stat. 105, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e-5 (f)(1); H. R. Rep. No. 92-238, pp. 17-19 (1971); S. Rep. No. 92-415, pp. 9-11 (1971); S. Conf. Rep. No. 92-681, pp. 17-18 (1972); H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 92-899, pp. 17-18 (1972). Finally, in Hutto v. Finney, decided just last Term, the Court held that in enacting the Civil Rights Attorney's Fees Awards Act of 1976, 42 U. S. C. § 1988, Congress intended to override the Eleventh Amendment immunity of the States and authorize fee awards payable by the States when their officials are sued in their official capacities. 437 U.S., at 693-694. Although the statutory language in Hutto did not separately impose liability on States in so many words,16 the statute had "a history focusing directly on the question of state liability; Congress considered and firmly rejected the suggestion that States should be immune from fee awards." Id., at 698 n. 31. Also, the Court noted that the statute would have been rendered meaningless with respect to States if the Act did not impose liability for attorney's fees on the States. Ibid.; see Employees v. Missouri Public Health Dept., supra, at 285-286. By contrast, § 1983 does not explicitly and by clear language indicate on its face an intent to sweep away the immunity of the States; nor does it have a history which focuses directly on the question of state liability and which shows that Congress considered and firmly decided to abrogate the Eleventh Amendment immunity of the States. Nor does our reaffirmance of Edelman render § 1983 meaningless insofar as States are concerned. See Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123 (1908).
, 437 U.S. 678, 703 (1978), Monell made it "surely at least an open question whether § 1983 properly construed does not make the States liable for relief of all kinds, notwithstanding the Eleventh Amendment."
Respondents did not even raise the possibility that Alabama might be a "person" for purposes of § 1983.8 Since the issue is not, as the Court now phrases it, whether the Members of this Court were then aware of Monell, ante, at 340 n. 9, but rather whether they had before them briefs and arguments detailing the implications of Monell for the question of whether a State is a "person" for purposes of § 1983, it is not anomalous that the Court's opinion in Pugh failed to address or consider this issue.
§ 2, 16 Stat. 431. Monell, held that "[since] there is nothing in the 'context' of the Civil Rights Act calling for a restricted interpretation of the word 'person,' the language of that section should prima facie be construed to include 'bodies politic' among the entities that could be sued." 436 U.S., at 689-690, n. 53. Even the Court's opinion today does not dispute the fact that in 1871 the phrase "bodies politic and corporate" would certainly have referred to the States.
Globe App. 68. The bill was meant to give "[full] force and effect . . . to section five" of the Fourteenth Amendment, Globe 322 (Rep. Stoughton),14 see id., at 800 (Rep. Perry); Monell, 436 U.S., at 685 n. 45, and therefore, like the prohibitions of that Amendment, to be addressed against the States themselves. See, e. g., Globe 481-482 (Rep. Wilson); 696 (Sen. Edmunds). It was, as Representative Kerr who opposed the bill instantly recognized, "against the rights of the States of this Union." Globe App. 46. Representative Shellabarger, in introducing the bill, made this explicit, stressing the need for "necessary affirmative legislation to enforce the personal rights which the Constitution guaranties, as between persons in the State and the State itself." Id., at 70. See, e. g., id., at 80 (Rep. Perry); Globe 375 (Rep. Lowe); 481-482 (Rep. Wilson); 568 (Sen. Edmunds). Representative Bingham elaborated the point:
"The powers of the States have been limited and the powers of Congress extended by the last three amendments of the Constitution. These last amendments -- thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen -- do, in my judgment, vest in Congress a power to protect the rights of citizens against States, and individuals in States, never before granted.
"The inhibitions in the [Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth] amendments against the United States and the States are against them in their corporate and legislative capacities, for the thing or acts prohibited can alone be performed by them in their corporate or legislative capacities.
"reaches out and draws within the despotic circle of central power all the domestic, internal, and local institutions and offices of the States, and then asserts over them an arbitrary and paramount control as of the rights, privileges, and immunities secured and protected, in a peculiar sense, by the United States in the citizens thereof. Having done this, having swallowed up the States and their institutions, tribunals, and functions, it leaves them the shadow of what they once were." Globe 365.
"If any one thinks it is going too far to give the United States this national supervisory power to protect the fundamental rights of citizens of the United States, I do not agree with him. It is not wise to permit our devotion to the reserved rights of the States to be carried so far as to deprive the citizen of his privileges and immunities.
, 411 U.S. 279, 287 (1973). Moreover, I agree that an affirmance here follows logically from the Court's decision in Edelman, because the explanatory notice approved by the Court of Appeals clearly is ancillary to prospective relief. But given that basis for deciding the present case, it is entirely unnecessary for the Court to address the question whether a State is a "person" within the meaning of § 1983. Accordingly, I join Parts I, II, and III of my Brother Brennan's opinion.
|
, 134 U.S. 1, 14-45 (1890), where the Court for the first time held the Eleventh Amendment to bar a suit against a State by its own citizen.
In Seminole Tribe v. Florida, 517 U.S. 44 (1996), the Court held that Congress did not have the power under the Commerce Clause to annul the States' immunity under the Eleventh Amendment. Repudiating the dissenting justices' argument that the framers of the Constitution never contended that sovereign immunity would affect the new federal question jurisdiction created by Article III of the Constitution, the majority offered that "the lack of any statute vesting general federal-question jurisdiction in the federal courts until much later [1875] makes the dissent's demand for greater specificity about then-dormant jurisdiction overly exacting." Id., at 70.
, 437 U.S. 678, 698 n.31 (1978), the Court rejected the Attorney General's argument that the Attorneys Fees Award Act of 1976 did not abrogate the Eleventh Amendment immunity because the language of the statute did not expressly extend to States
The present Act . . . has a history focusing directly upon the question of state liability; Congress considered and firmly rejected the suggestion that States should be immune from fee awards. Moreover, the Act is not part of an intricate regulatory scheme offering alternative methods of obtaining relief. If the Act does not impose liability for attorney's fees on the States, it has no meaning with respect to them. Finally, the claims asserted in Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651, were based on a statute rooted in Congress' Article I power. . . . In this case, as in Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, 427 U.S. 445, the claim is based on a statute enacted to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment. As we pointed out in Fitzpatrick: "[The] Eleventh Amendment, and the principle of state sovereignty which it embodies . . . are necessarily limited by the enforcement provisions of § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment . . . When Congress acts pursuant to § 5, not only is it exercising legislative authority that is plenary within the terms of the constitutional grant, it is exercising that authority under one section of a constitutional Amendment whose other sections by their own terms embody limitations on state authority. . . . Applying the standard appropriate in a case brought to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment, we have no doubt that the Act is clear enough to authorize the award of attorney's fees payable by the State.
[T]he Eleventh Amendment . . . certainly does not bar constitutional tort actions against states, save in a purely formal sense. In the main, it functions to force civil rights plaintiffs to sue state officers rather than the states themselves, thus triggering qualified immunity. The alternative of suing state officers under Section 1983 is anything but irrelevant to the law of the Eleventh Amendment. The Eleventh Amendment has survived not because it means so much but precisely because if means so little. If it were not possible to circumvent the Eleventh Amendment through Section 1983, the Supreme Court would long ago have confined the Eleventh Amendment to diversity cases or adopted some other debilitating construction. Put another way, Monroe v. Pape is the Ex Parte Young of retrospective relief. Just as the fiction of Ex Parte Young routinely allows civil rights plaintiffs to evade the Eleventh Amendment when they seek injunctive relief, Monroe v. Pape (almost as) routinely allows civil rights plaintiffs to evade the Eleventh Amendment when they seek money damages.
John C. Jeffries, In Praise of the Eleventh Amendment and Section 1983, 84 Va. L. Rev. 47, 59 (1998). Will suits against individual state officials under Section 1983 ensure redress to citizens who have suffered deprivations of federal constitutional rights. In what circumstances is recovery least likely?
, 473 U.S. 234 (1985), the Court held that Congress had not rescinded the States' Eleventh Amendment immunity when it enacted the Rehabilitation Act. Rejecting plaintiff's invitation to find the abrogation in the legislative history of the Act, the Court mandated that "Congress may abrogate the States' constitutionally secured immunity from suit in federal court only by making its intention unmistakably clear in the language of the statute." Atascadero, 473 U.S. at 242.
, 500 F. Supp. 1207 (D.R.I. 1980), plaintiff brought an action for damages against the State under Section 1983. Plaintiff successfully argued that Rhode Island had waived its immunity from suit in federal court by enacting a state law that rendered the State liable "in all actions of tort in the same manner as a private individual or corporation." The district court rejected the State's contention that Quern prohibited all Section 1983 actions against States:
Justice Rehnquist's opinion, while emphatic in reasserting the Court's belief that Congress had not intended to abrogate the states' immunity through § 1983, see 440 U.S. at 345, conspicuously avoided any statement that the term "person" did not include "state."9Suggesting that Congress included the states within the scope of § 1983 only to leave them free to decline to answer for any constitutional wrongdoing appears strained, if not actually illogical. However, it seems to this Court that the consequences of adopting Justice Brennan's interpretation of Quern are equally unreasonable. The legislative history reveals that proponents of § 1983 had the highest ambitions for the scope and effectiveness of its remedial powers. Representative Bingham, author of § 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment, argued in favor of the passage of § 1983:
The States never had the right, though they had the power, to inflict wrongs upon free citizens by a denial of the full protection of the laws .... (And) the States did deny to citizens the equal protection of the laws, they did deny the rights of citizens under the Constitution, and except to the extent of the express limitations upon the States, as I have shown, the citizen has no remedy.... They took property without compensation, and he had no remedy. They restricted the freedom of the press, and he had no remedy. They restricted the freedom of speech, and he had no remedy. They restricted the rights of conscience, and he had no remedy .... Who dare say, now that the Constitution has been amended, that the nation cannot by law provide against all such abuses and denials of right as these in the States and by States, or combinations of persons?Cong. Globe, 42d Cong., 1st Sess.App. 85 (1871), quoted in Monell v. New York Dept. of Social Services, 436 U.S. at 685 n. 45, 98 S. Ct. at 2033 n. 45.
Senator Edmunds, manager of the bill in the Senate, characterized § 1983 as "really reenact(ing) the Constitution." Cong. Globe, 42d Cong., 1st Sess. 569 (1871), quoted in Monell v. New York Dept. of Social Services, 436 U.S. at 685, 98 S. Ct. at 2033. In interpreting a statute which "was intended to provide a remedy, to be broadly construed, against all forms of official violation of federally protected rights," Monell v. New York Dept. of Social Services, 436 U.S. at 700-01, 98 S. Ct. at 2041, it would seem strained, if not actually illogical, to conclude that Congress meant to exclude the governmental entities which, being most powerful, could pose the greatest threat to the constitutional rights of citizens, even when those entities consented to suit.
Faced, then, with two possible interpretations-neither of which is particularly satisfactory-this Court accepts the one that gives greatest latitude to § 1983's broad remedial purpose. It concludes that the states are "persons" potentially liable for constitutional deprivations inflicted through official custom and policy, but that, because Congress has not exercised its § 5 powers to abrogate Eleventh Amendment immunity, each state must consent to the imposition of such liability. This interpretation allows victims of unconstitutional activity the largest possibility for redress, while exacting little cost in terms of federalism. Because there is no forced waiver, each state maintains ultimate control over its own potential liability.11
|
Will v. Michigan |
Justice White delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case presents the question whether a State, or an official of the State while acting in his or her official capacity, is a "person" within the meaning of Rev. Stat. § 1979, 42 U. S. C. § 1983.
Petitioner Ray Will filed suit in Michigan Circuit Court alleging various violations of the United States and Michigan Constitutions as grounds for a claim under § 1983. He alleged that he had been denied a promotion to a data systems analyst position with the Department of State Police for an improper reason, that is, because his brother had been a student activist and the subject of a "red squad" file maintained by respondent. Named as defendants were the Department of State Police and the Director of State Police in his official capacity, also a respondent here.
The Circuit Court remanded the case to the Michigan Civil Service Commission for a grievance hearing. While the grievance was pending, petitioner filed suit in the Michigan Court of Claims raising an essentially identical § 1983 claim. The Civil Service Commission ultimately found in petitioner's favor, ruling that respondents had refused to promote petitioner because of "partisan considerations." App. 46. On the basis of that finding, the state-court judge, acting in both the Circuit Court and the Court of Claims cases, concluded that petitioner had established a violation of the United States Constitution. The judge held that the Circuit Court action was barred under state law but that the Claims Court action could go forward. The judge also ruled that respondents were persons for purposes of § 1983.
The Michigan Court of Appeals vacated the judgment against the Department of State Police, holding that a State is not a person under § 1983, but remanded the case for determination of the possible immunity of the Director of State Police from liability for damages. The Michigan Supreme Court granted discretionary review and affirmed the Court of Appeals in part and reversed in part. Smith v. Department of Pub. Health, 428 Mich. 540, 410 N. W. 2d 749 (1987). The Supreme Court agreed that the State itself is not a person under § 1983, but held that a state official acting in his or her official capacity also is not such a person.
The Michigan Supreme Court's holding that a State is not a person under § 1983 conflicts with a number of state- and federal-court decisions to the contrary. We granted certiorari to resolve the conflict. 485 U.S. 1005 (1988).
Prior to Monell v. New York City Dept. of Social Services , 436 U.S. 658 (1978), the question whether a State is a person within the meaning of § 1983 had been answered by this Court in the negative. In Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167, 187-191 (1961), the Court had held that a municipality was not a person under § 1983. "[T]hat being the case," we reasoned, § 1983 "could not have been intended to include States as parties defendant." Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, 427 U.S. 445, 452 (1976).
But in Monell, the Court overruled Monroe, holding that a municipality was a person under § 1983. 436 U.S., at 690. Since then, various members of the Court have debated whether a State is a person within the meaning of § 1983, see Hutto v. Finney, 437 U.S. 678, 700-704 (1978) (Brennan, J., concurring); id., at 708, n. 6 (Powell, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part), but this Court has never expressly dealt with that issue.
Petitioner filed the present § 1983 actions in Michigan state court, which places the question whether a State is a person under § 1983 squarely before us since the Eleventh Amendment does not apply in state courts. Maine v. Thiboutot, 448 U.S. 1, 9, n. 7 (1980). For the reasons that follow, we reaffirm today what we had concluded prior to Monell and what some have considered implicit in Quern: that a State is not a person within the meaning of § 1983.
We observe initially that if a State is a "person" within the meaning of § 1983, the section is to be read as saying that "every person, including a State, who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects . . . ." That would be a decidedly awkward way of expressing an intent to subject the States to liability. At the very least, reading the statute in this way is not so clearly indicated that it provides reason to depart from the often-expressed understanding that "'in common usage, the term 'person' does not include the sovereign, [and] statutes employing the [word] are ordinarily construed to exclude it.'" [citations omitted].
This approach is particularly applicable where it is claimed that Congress has subjected the States to liability to which they had not been subject before. . . . This common usage of the term "person" provides a strong indication that "person" as used in § 1983 likewise does not include a State.
The language of § 1983 also falls far short of satisfying the ordinary rule of statutory construction that if Congress intends to alter the "usual constitutional balance between the States and the Federal Government," it must make its intention to do so "unmistakably clear in the language of the statute." Atascadero State Hospital v. Scanlon
Our conclusion that a State is not a "person" within the meaning of § 1983 is reinforced by Congress' purpose in enacting the statute. Congress enacted § 1 of the Civil Rights Act of 1871, 17 Stat. 13, the precursor to § 1983, shortly after the end of the Civil War "in response to the widespread deprivations of civil rights in the Southern States and the inability or unwillingness of authorities in those States to protect those rights or punish wrongdoers." Felder v. Casey
Section 1983 provides a federal forum to remedy many deprivations of civil liberties, but it does not provide a federal forum for litigants who seek a remedy against a State for alleged deprivations of civil liberties. The Eleventh Amendment bars such suits unless the State has waived its immunity, Welch v. Texas Dept. of Highways and Public Transportation, 483 U.S. 468, 472-473 (1987) (plurality opinion), or unless Congress has exercised its undoubted power under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to override that immunity. That Congress, in passing § 1983, had no intention to disturb the States' Eleventh Amendment immunity and so to alter the federal-state balance in that respect was made clear in our decision in Quern. Given that a principal purpose behind the enactment of § 1983 was to provide a federal forum for civil rights claims, and that Congress did not provide such a federal forum for civil rights claims against States, we cannot accept petitioner's argument that Congress intended nevertheless to create a cause of action against States to be brought in state courts, which are precisely the courts Congress sought to allow civil rights claimants to avoid through § 1983.
This does not mean, as petitioner suggests, that we think that the scope of the Eleventh Amendment and the scope of § 1983 are not separate issues. Certainly they are. But in deciphering congressional intent as to the scope of § 1983, the scope of the Eleventh Amendment is a consideration, and we decline to adopt a reading of § 1983 that disregards it.4
Our conclusion is further supported by our holdings that in enacting § 1983, Congress did not intend to override well-established immunities or defenses under the common law. "One important assumption underlying the Court's decisions in this area is that members of the 42d Congress were familiar with common-law principles, including defenses previously recognized in ordinary tort litigation, and that they likely intended these common-law principles to obtain, absent specific provisions to the contrary." Newport v. Fact Concerts, Inc.
The legislative history of § 1983 does not suggest a different conclusion. Petitioner contends that the congressional debates on § 1 of the 1871 Act indicate that § 1983 was intended to extend to the full reach of the Fourteenth Amendment and thereby to provide a remedy "'against all forms of official violation of federally protected rights.'" Brief for Petitioner 16 (quoting Monell, 436 U.S., at 700-701). He refers us to various parts of the vigorous debates accompanying the passage of § 1983 and revealing that it was the failure of the States to take appropriate action that was undoubtedly the motivating force behind § 1983. The inference must be drawn, it is urged, that Congress must have intended to subject the States themselves to liability. But the intent of Congress to provide a remedy for unconstitutional state action does not without more include the sovereign States among those persons against whom § 1983 actions would lie. Construing § 1983 as a remedy for "official violation of federally protected rights" does no more than confirm that the section is directed against state action -- action "under color of" state law. It does not suggest that the State itself was a person that Congress intended to be subject to liability.
Although there were sharp and heated debates, the discussion of § 1 of the bill, which contained the present § 1983, was not extended. And although in other respects the impact on state sovereignty was much talked about, no one suggested that § 1 would subject the States themselves to a damages suit under federal law. Quern, 440 U.S., at 343. There was complaint that § 1 would subject state officers to damages liability, but no suggestion that it would also expose the States themselves. Cong. Globe, 42d Cong., 1st Sess., 366, 385 (1871). We find nothing substantial in the legislative history that leads us to believe that Congress intended that the word "person" in § 1983 included the States of the Union. And surely nothing in the debates rises to the clearly expressed legislative intent necessary to permit that construction.
Likewise, the Act of Feb. 25, 1871, § 2, 16 Stat. 431 (the "Dictionary Act"), on which we relied in Monell, supra, at 688-689, does not counsel a contrary conclusion here. As we noted in Quern, that Act, while adopted prior to § 1 of the Civil Rights Act of 1871, was adopted after § 2 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, from which § 1 of the 1871 Act was derived. 440 U.S., at 341, n. 11. Moreover, we disagree with Justice Brennan that at the time the Dictionary Act was passed "the phrase 'bodies politic and corporate' was understood to include the States." Post, at 78. Rather, an examination of authorities of the era suggests that the phrase was used to mean corporations, both private and public (municipal), and not to include the States.6
Finally, Monell itself is not to the contrary. True, prior to Monell the Court had reasoned that if municipalities were not persons then surely States also were not. Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, 427 U.S., at 452. And Monell overruled Monroe, undercutting that logic. But it does not follow that if municipalities are persons then so are States. States are protected by the Eleventh Amendment while municipalities are not, Monell, 436 U.S., at 690, n. 54, and we consequently limited our holding in Monell "to local government units which are not considered part of the State for Eleventh Amendment purposes," ibid. Conversely, our holding here does not cast any doubt on Monell, and applies only to States or governmental entities that are considered "arms of the State" for Eleventh Amendment purposes. See, e. g., Mt. Healthy Bd. of Ed. v. Doyle
Petitioner asserts, alternatively, that state officials should be considered "persons" under § 1983 even though acting in their official capacities. In this case, petitioner named as defendant not only the Michigan Department of State Police but also the Director of State Police in his official capacity.
Obviously, state officials literally are persons. But a suit against a state official in his or her official capacity is not a suit against the official but rather is a suit against the official's office. Brandon v. Holt
We hold that neither a State nor its officials acting in their official capacities are "persons" under § 1983. The judgment of the Michigan Supreme Court is affirmed.
It is so ordered.
Justice Brennan, with whom Justice Marshall, Justice Blackmun, and Justice Stevens join, dissenting.
Because this case was brought in state court, the Court concedes, the Eleventh Amendment is inapplicable here. See ante, at 63-64. Like the guest who would not leave, however, the Eleventh Amendment lurks everywhere in today's decision and, in truth, determines its outcome.
I
Section 1 of the Civil Rights Act of 1871, 42 U. S. C. § 1983, renders certain "persons" liable for deprivations of constitutional rights. The question presented is whether the word "person" in this statute includes the States and state officials acting in their official capacities.
One might expect that this statutory question would generate a careful and thorough analysis of the language, legislative history, and general background of § 1983. If this is what one expects, however, one will be disappointed by today's decision. For this case is not decided on the basis of our ordinary method of statutory construction; instead, the Court disposes of it by means of various rules of statutory interpretation that it summons to its aid each time the question looks close. Specifically, the Court invokes the following interpretative principles: the word "persons" is ordinarily construed to exclude the sovereign; congressional intent to affect the federal-state balance must be "clear and manifest"; and intent to abrogate States' Eleventh Amendment immunity must appear in the language of the statute itself. The Court apparently believes that each of these rules obviates the need for close analysis of a statute's language and history. Properly applied, however, only the last of these interpretative principles has this effect, and that principle is not pertinent to the case before us.
The Court invokes, first, the "often-expressed understanding" that "'in common usage, the term "person" does not include the sovereign, [and] statutes employing the [word] are ordinarily construed to exclude it.'" Ante, at 64, quoting Wilson v. Omaha Tribe, 442 U.S. 653, 667 (1979). This rule is used both to refute the argument that the language of § 1983 demonstrates an intent that States be included as defendants, ante, at 64, and to overcome the argument based on the Dictionary Act's definition of "person" to include bodies politic and corporate, ante, at 69-70. It is ironic, to say the least, that the Court chooses this interpretive rule in explaining why the Dictionary Act is not decisive, since the rule is relevant only when the word "persons" has no statutory definition. When one considers the origins and content of this interpretive guideline, moreover, one realizes that it is inapplicable here and, even if applied, would defeat rather than support the Court's approach and result.
The idea that the word "persons" ordinarily excludes the sovereign can be traced to the "familiar principle that the King is not bound by any act of Parliament unless he be named therein by special and particular words." Dollar Savings Bank v. United States, 19 Wall. 227, 239 (1874). As this passage suggests, however, this interpretive principle applies only to "the enacting sovereign." United States v. California, 297 U.S. 175, 186 (1936). See also Jefferson County Pharmaceutical Assn., Inc. v. Abbott Laboratories, 460 U.S. 150, 161, n. 21 (1983). Furthermore, as explained in United States v. Herron, 20 Wall. 251, 255 (1874), even the principle as applied to the enacting sovereign is not without limitations: "Where an act of Parliament is made for the public good, as for the advancement of religion and justice or to prevent injury and wrong, the king is bound by such act, though not particularly named therein; but where a statute is general, and thereby any prerogative, right, title, or interest is divested or taken from the king, in such case the king is not bound, unless the statute is made to extend to him by express words." It would be difficult to imagine a statute more clearly designed "for the public good," and "to prevent injury and wrong," than § 1983.
Even if this interpretive principle were relevant to this case, the Court's invocation of it to the exclusion of careful statutory analysis is in error. As we have made clear, this principle is merely "an aid to consistent construction of statutes of the enacting sovereign when their purpose is in doubt, but it does not require that the aim of a statute fairly to be inferred be disregarded because not explicitly stated." United States v. California, supra, at 186. Indeed, immediately following the passage quoted by the Court today, ante, at 64, to the effect that statutes using the word "person" are "ordinarily construed to exclude" the sovereign, we stated:
"Decision is not to be reached by a strict construction of the words of the Act, nor by the application of artificial canons of construction. On the contrary, we are to read the statutory language in its ordinary and natural sense, and if doubts remain, resolve them in the light, not only of the policy intended to be served by the enactment, but, as well, by all other available aids to construction." United States v. Cooper Corp., 312 U.S. 600, 604-605 (1941).
The second interpretive principle that the Court invokes comes from cases . . . which require a "clear and manifest" expression of congressional intent to change some aspect of federal-state relations. Ante, at 65. These cases do not, however, permit substitution of an absolutist rule of statutory construction for thorough statutory analysis. Indeed, in each of these decisions the Court undertook a careful and detailed analysis of the statutory language and history under consideration. . . .
The only principle of statutory construction employed by the Court that would justify a perfunctory and inconclusive analysis of a statute's language and history is one that is irrelevant to this case. This is the notion "that if Congress intends to alter the 'usual constitutional balance between the States and the Federal Government,' it must make its intention to do so 'unmistakably clear in the language of the statute.'" Ante, at 65, quoting Atascadero State Hospital v. Scanlon
Where the Eleventh Amendment applies, the Court has devised a clear-statement principle more robust than its requirement of clarity in any other situation. . . . Since this case was brought in state court, however, this strict drafting requirement has no application here. The Eleventh Amendment can hardly be "a consideration," ante, at 67, in a suit to which it does not apply.
That this Court has generated a uniquely daunting requirement of clarity in Eleventh Amendment cases explains why Quern v. Jordan, 440 U.S. 332 (1979), did not decide the question before us today. Because only the Eleventh Amendment permits use of this clear-statement principle, the holding of Quern v. Jordan that § 1983 does not abrogate States' Eleventh Amendment immunity tells us nothing about the meaning of the term "person" in § 1983 as a matter of ordinary statutory construction. Quern's conclusion thus does not compel, or even suggest, a particular result today.
The singularity of this Court's approach to statutory interpretation in Eleventh Amendment cases also refutes the Court's argument that, given Quern's holding, it would make no sense to construe § 1983 to include States as "persons." See ante, at 66. This is so, the Court suggests, because such a construction would permit suits against States in state but not federal court, even though a major purpose of Congress in enacting § 1983 was to provide a federal forum for litigants who had been deprived of their constitutional rights. See, e. g., Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167 (1961). In answering the question whether § 1983 provides a federal forum for suits against the States themselves, however, one must apply the clear-statement principle reserved for Eleventh Amendment cases. Since this principle is inapplicable to suits brought in state court, and inapplicable to the question whether States are among those subject to a statute, see Employees v. Missouri Dept. of Public Health and Welfare
In short, the only principle of statutory interpretation that permits the Court to avoid a careful and thorough analysis of § 1983's language and history is the clear-statement principle that this Court has come to apply in Eleventh Amendment cases -- a principle that is irrelevant to this state-court action. In my view, a careful and detailed analysis of § 1983 leads to the conclusion that States are "persons" within the meaning of that statute.
II
Although § 1983 itself does not define the term "person," we are not without a statutory definition of this word. "Any analysis of the meaning of the word 'person' in § 1983 . . . must begin. . . with the Dictionary Act." Monell v. New York City Dept. of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658, 719 (1978) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting). Passed just two months before § 1983, and designed to "suppl[y] rules of construction for all legislation," ibid., the Dictionary Act provided:
In Monell, we held this definition to be not merely allowable but mandatory, requiring that the word "person" be construed to include "bodies politic and corporate" unless the statute under consideration "by its terms called for a deviation from this practice." 436 U.S., at 689-690, n. 53. Thus, we concluded, where nothing in the "context" of a particular statute "call[s] for a restricted interpretation of the word 'person,' the language of that [statute] should prima facie be construed to include 'bodies politic' among the entities that could be sued." Ibid.
Both before and after the time when the Dictionary Act and § 1983 were passed, the phrase "bodies politic and corporate" was understood to include the States. . . . Indeed, the very legislators who passed § 1 referred to States in these terms. See, e. g., Cong. Globe, 42d Cong., 1st Sess., 661-662 (1871) (Sen. Vickers) ("What is a State? Is it not a body politic and corporate?"); id., at 696 (Sen. Edmunds) ("A State is a corporation").
The reason why States are "bodies politic and corporate" is simple: just as a corporation is an entity that can act only through its agents, "[t]he State is a political corporate body, can act only through agents, and can command only by laws." . . . As a "body politic and corporate," a State falls squarely within the Dictionary Act's definition of a "person."
While it is certainly true that the phrase "bodies politic and corporate" referred to private and public corporations, see ante, at 69, and n. 9, this fact does not draw into question the conclusion that this phrase also applied to the States. Phrases may, of course, have multiple referents. Indeed, each and every dictionary cited by the Court accords a broader realm -- one that comfortably, and in most cases explicitly, includes the sovereign -- to this phrase than the Court gives it today. . . .
Because I recognize that both uses of this phrase were deemed valid when § 1983 and the Dictionary Act were passed, the Court accuses me of "confus[ing] [the] precise definition of [this] phrase with its use 'in a rather loose way,'" "to refer to the state (as opposed to a State)." Ante, at 70, n. 9, quoting Black, supra, at 143. It had never occurred to me, however, that only "precise" definitions counted as valid ones. Where the question we face is what meaning Congress attached to a particular word or phrase, we usually -- and properly -- are loath to conclude that Congress meant to use the word or phrase in a hypertechnical sense unless it said so. Nor does the Court's distinction between "the state" and "a State" have any force. The suggestion, I take it, is that the phrase "bodies politic and corporate" refers only to nations rather than to the states within a nation; but then the Court must explain why so many of the sources I have quoted refer to states in addition to nations. In an opinion so utterly devoted to the rights of the States as sovereigns, moreover, it is surprising indeed to find the Court distinguishing between our sovereign States and our sovereign Nation.
In deciding what the phrase "bodies politic and corporate" means, furthermore, I do not see the relevance of the meaning of the term "public corporation." See ante, at 69-70, n. 9. That is not the phrase chosen by Congress in the Dictionary Act, and the Court's suggestion that this phrase is coterminous with the phrase "bodies politic and corporate" begs the question whether the latter one includes the States.
Thus, the question before us is whether the presumption that the word "person" in § 1 of the Civil Rights Act of 1871 included bodies politic and corporate -- and hence the States -- is overcome by anything in the statute's language and history. Certainly nothing in the statutory language overrides this presumption. The statute is explicitly directed at action taken "under color of" state law, and thus supports rather than refutes the idea that the "persons" mentioned in the statute include the States. Indeed, for almost a century -- until Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167 (1961) -- it was unclear whether the statute applied at all to action not authorized by the State, and the enduring significance of the first cases construing the Fourteenth Amendment, pursuant to which § 1 was passed, lies in their conclusion that the prohibitions of this Amendment do not reach private action. See Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883). In such a setting, one cannot reasonably deny the significance of § 1983's explicit focus on state action.
Unimpressed by such arguments, the Court simply asserts that reading "States" where the statute mentions "person" would be "decidedly awkward." Ante, at 64. The Court does not describe the awkwardness that it perceives, but I take it that its objection is that the under-color-of-law requirement would be redundant if States were included in the statute because States necessarily act under color of state law. But § 1983 extends as well to natural persons, who do not necessarily so act; in order to ensure that they would be liable only when they did so, the statute needed the under-color-of-law requirement. The only way to remove the redundancy that the Court sees would have been to eliminate the catchall phrase "person" altogether, and separately describe each category of possible defendants and the circumstances under which they might be liable. I cannot think of a situation not involving the Eleventh Amendment, however, in which we have imposed such an unforgiving drafting requirement on Congress.
Taking the example closest to this case, we might have observed in Monell that § 1983 was clumsily written if it included municipalities, since these, too, may act only under color of state authority. Nevertheless, we held there that the statute does apply to municipalities. . . .
The legislative history and background of the statute confirm that the presumption created by the Dictionary Act was not overridden in § 1 of the 1871 Act, and that, even without such a presumption, it is plain that "person" in the 1871 Act must include the States. I discussed in detail the legislative history of this statute in my opinion concurring in the judgment in Quern v. Jordan, 440 U.S., at 357-365, and I shall not cover that ground again here. Suffice it to say that, in my view, the legislative history of this provision, though spare, demonstrates that Congress recognized and accepted the fact that the statute was directed at the States themselves. One need not believe that the statute satisfies this Court's heightened clear-statement principle, reserved for Eleventh Amendment cases, in order to conclude that the language and legislative history of § 1983 show that the word "person" must include the States.
As to the more general historical background of § 1, we too easily forget, I think, the circumstances existing in this country when the early civil rights statutes were passed. "[V]iewed against the events and passions of the time," United States v. Price
"For a few years 'radical' Republicans dominated the governments of the Southern States and Negroes played a substantial political role. But countermeasures were swift and violent. The Ku Klux Klan was organized by southern whites in 1866 and a similar organization appeared with the romantic title of the Knights of the White Camellia. In 1868 a wave of murders and assaults was launched including assassinations designed to keep Negroes from the polls. The States themselves were helpless, despite the resort by some of them to extreme measures such as making it legal to hunt down and shoot any disguised man.
"Within the Congress pressures mounted in the period between the end of the war and 1870 for drastic measures. A few months after the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment on December 6, 1865, Congress, on April 9, 1866, enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1866 . . . . On June 13, 1866, the Fourteenth Amendment was proposed, and it was ratified in July 1868. In February 1869 the Fifteenth Amendment was proposed, and it was ratified in February 1870. On May 31, 1870, the Enforcement Act of 1870 was enacted." Id., at 803-805 (footnotes omitted).
This was a Congress in the midst of altering the "'balance between the States and the Federal Government.'" Ante, at 65, quoting Atascadero State Hospital v. Scanlon, 473 U.S., at 242. It was fighting to save the Union, and in doing so, it transformed our federal system. It is difficult, therefore, to believe that this same Congress did not intend to include States among those who might be liable under § 1983 for the very deprivations that were threatening this Nation at that time.
III
To describe the breadth of the Court's holding is to demonstrate its unwisdom. If States are not "persons" within the meaning of § 1983, then they may not be sued under that statute regardless of whether they have consented to suit. Even if, in other words, a State formally and explicitly consented to suits against it in federal or state court, no § 1983 plaintiff could proceed against it because States are not within the statute's category of possible defendants.
This is indeed an exceptional holding. Not only does it depart from our suggestion in Alabama v. Pugh, 438 U.S. 781, 782 (1978), that a State could be a defendant under § 1983 if it consented to suit, see also Quern v. Jordan, supra, at 340, but it also renders ineffective the choices some States have made to permit such suits against them. See, e. g., Della Grotta v. Rhode Island
The Court appears to be driven to this peculiar result in part by its view that "in enacting § 1983, Congress did not intend to override well-established immunities or defenses under the common law." Ante, at 67. But the question whether States are "persons" under § 1983 is separate and distinct from the question whether they may assert a defense of common-law sovereign immunity. In our prior decisions involving common-law immunities, we have not held that the existence of an immunity defense excluded the relevant state actor from the category of "persons" liable under § 1983, see, e. g., Forrester v. White
For my part, I would reverse the judgment below and remand for resolution of the question whether Michigan would assert common-law sovereign immunity in defense to this suit and, if so, whether that assertion of immunity would preclude the suit.
Given the suggestion in the court below that Michigan enjoys no common-law immunity for violations of its own Constitution, Smith v. Department of Public Health, 428 Mich. 540, 641-642, 410 N. W. 2d 749, 793-794 (1987) (Boyle, J., concurring), there is certainly a possibility that that court would hold that the State also lacks immunity against § 1983 suits for violations of the Federal Constitution. Moreover, even if that court decided that the State's waiver of immunity did not apply to § 1983 suits, there is a substantial question whether Michigan could so discriminate between virtually identical causes of action only on the ground that one was a state suit and the other a federal one. Cf. Testa v. Katt
Because the court below disposed of the case on the ground that States were not "persons" within the meaning of § 1983, it did not pass upon these difficult and important questions. I therefore would remand this case to the state court to resolve these questions in the first instance.
Justice Stevens, dissenting.
Legal doctrines often flourish long after their raison d'etre has perished. The doctrine of sovereign immunity rests on the fictional premise that the "King can do no wrong." Even though the plot to assassinate James I in 1605, the execution of Charles I in 1649, and the Colonists' reaction to George III's stamp tax made rather clear the fictional character of the doctrine's underpinnings, British subjects found a gracious means of compelling the King to obey the law rather than simply repudiating the doctrine itself. They held his advisers and his agents responsible.1
In our administration of § 1983, we have also relied on fictions to protect the illusion that a sovereign State, absent consent, may not be held accountable for its delicts in federal court. Under a settled course of decision, in contexts ranging from school desegregation to the provision of public assistance benefits to the administration of prison systems and other state facilities, we have held the States liable under § 1983 for their constitutional violations through the artifice of naming a public officer as a nominal party. Once one strips away the Eleventh Amendment overlay applied to actions in federal court, it is apparent that the Court in these cases has treated the State as the real party in interest both for the purposes of granting prospective and ancillary relief and of denying retroactive relief. When suit is brought in state court, where the Eleventh Amendment is inapplicable, it follows that the State can be named directly as a party under § 1983.
The Civil Rights Act of 1871 was "intended to provide a remedy, to be broadly construed, against all forms of official violation of federally protected rights." Monell v. New York City Dept. of Social Services, 436 U.S., at 700-701. Our holdings that a § 1983 action can be brought against state officials in their official capacity for constitutional violations properly recognize and are faithful to that profound mandate. If prospective relief can be awarded against state officials under § 1983 and the State is the real party in interest in such suits, the State must be a "person" which can be held liable under § 1983. No other conclusion is available. Eleventh Amendment principles may limit the State's capacity to be sued as such in federal court. See Alabama v. Pugh, 438 U.S. 781 (1978). But since those principles are not applicable to suits in state court, see Thiboutot, supra, at 9, n. 7; Nevada v. Hall, 440 U.S. 410 (1979), there is no need to resort to the fiction of an official-capacity suit and the State may and should be named directly as a defendant in a § 1983 action.
The Court having constructed an edifice for the purposes of the Eleventh Amendment on the theory that the State is always the real party in interest in a § 1983 official-capacity action against a state officer, I would think the majority would be impelled to conclude that the State is a "person" under § 1983. As Justice Brennan has demonstrated, there is also a compelling textual argument that States are persons under § 1983. In addition, the Court's construction draws an illogical distinction between wrongs committed by county or municipal officials on the one hand, and those committed by state officials on the other. Finally, there is no necessity to import into this question of statutory construction doctrine created to protect the fiction that one sovereign cannot be sued in the courts of another sovereign. Aside from all of these reasons, the Court's holding that a State is not a person under § 1983 departs from a long line of judicial authority based on exactly that premise.
, 473 U.S. 234, 242 (1985); see also Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman, 465 U.S. 89, 99 (1984). Atascadero was an Eleventh Amendment case, but a similar approach is applied in other contexts. Congress should make its intention "clear and manifest" if it intends to pre-empt the historic powers of the States, Rice v. Santa Fe Elevator Corp., 331 U.S. 218, 230 (1947), or if it intends to impose a condition on the grant of federal moneys, Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman, 451 U.S. 1, 16 (1981); South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U.S. 203, 207 (1987). "In traditionally sensitive areas, such as legislation affecting the federal balance, the requirement of clear statement assures that the legislature has in fact faced, and intended to bring into issue, the critical matters involved in the judicial decision." United States v. Bass, 404 U.S. 336, 349 (1971).
, 487 U.S. 131, 147 (1988). Although Congress did not establish federal courts as the exclusive forum to remedy these deprivations, ibid., it is plain that "Congress assigned to the federal courts a paramount role" in this endeavor, Patsy v. Board of Regents of Florida, 457 U.S. 496, 503 (1982).
, 453 U.S. 247, 258 (1981). Stump v. Sparkman, 435 U.S. 349, 356 (1978); Scheuer v. Rhodes, 416 U.S. 232, 247 (1974); Pierson v. Ray, 386 U.S. 547, 554 (1967); and Tenney v. Brandhove, 341 U.S. 367, 376 (1951), are also to this effect. The doctrine of sovereign immunity was a familiar doctrine at common law. . . . We cannot conclude that § 1983 was intended to disregard the well-established immunity of a State from being sued without its consent.5
In our view, the Dictionary Act, like § 1983 itself and its legislative history, fails to evidence a clear congressional intent that States be held liable.
, 429 U.S. 274, 280 (1977).
, 469 U.S. 464, 471 (1985). As such, it is no different from a suit against the State itself. See, e. g., Kentucky v. Graham, 473 U.S. 159, 165-166 (1985); Monell, supra, at 690, n. 55. We see no reason to adopt a different rule in the present context, particularly when such a rule would allow petitioner to circumvent congressional intent by a mere pleading device.7
"But there is no hard and fast rule of exclusion. The purpose, the subject matter, the context, the legislative history, and the executive interpretation of the statute are aids to construction which may indicate an intent, by the use of the term, to bring state or nation within the scope of the law.
, 473 U.S. 234, 242 (1985). As the Court notes, Atascadero was an Eleventh Amendment case; the "constitutional balance" to which Atascadero refers is that struck by the Eleventh Amendment as this Court has come to interpret it. Although the Court apparently wishes it were otherwise, the principle of interpretation that Atascadero announced is unique to cases involving the Eleventh Amendment.
, 411 U.S. 279, 287 (1973); Atascadero, supra, at 240, n. 2, the answer to the question whether § 1983 provides a federal forum for suits against the States may be, and most often will be, different from the answer to the kind of question before us today. Since the question whether Congress has provided a federal forum for damages suits against the States is answered by applying a uniquely strict interpretive principle, see supra, at 75, the Court should not pretend that we have, in Quern, answered the question whether Congress intended to provide a federal forum for such suits, and then reason backwards from that "intent" to the conclusion that Congress must not have intended to allow such suits to proceed in state court.
"That in all acts hereafter passed . . . the word 'person' may extend and be applied to bodies politic and corporate . . . unless the context shows that such words were intended to be used in a more limited sense . . . ." Act of Feb. 25, 1871, § 2, 16 Stat. 431.
, 383 U.S. 787, 803 (1966), I have little doubt that § 1 of the Civil Rights Act of 1871 included States as "persons." The following brief description of the Reconstruction period is illuminating:
"The Civil War had ended in April 1865. Relations between Negroes and whites were increasingly turbulent. Congress had taken control of the entire governmental process in former Confederate States. It had declared the governments in 10 'unreconstructed' States to be illegal and had set up federal military administrations in their place. Congress refused to seat representatives from these States until they had adopted constitutions guaranteeing Negro suffrage, and had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment. Constitutional conventions were called in 1868. Six of the 10 States fulfilled Congress' requirements in 1868, the other four by 1870.
, 781 F. 2d 343 (CA1 1986). I do not understand what purpose is served, what principle of federalism or comity is promoted, by refusing to give force to a State's explicit consent to suit.
, 484 U.S. 219 (1988), and it is a mistake to do so today. Such an approach entrenches the effect of common-law immunity even where the immunity itself has been waived.
, 330 U.S. 386 (1947); Martinez v. California, 444 U.S. 277, 283, n. 7 (1980). Finally, even if both of these questions were resolved in favor of an immunity defense, there would remain the question whether it would be reasonable to attribute to Congress an intent to allow States to decide for themselves whether to take cognizance of § 1983 suits brought against them. Cf. Martinez, supra, at 284, and n. 8; Owen v. City of Independence, 445 U.S. 622, 647-648 (1980).
| Will v. Michigan Department of State Police Transcript |
Will v. Michigan Department of State Police Briefs |
|
, 502 U.S. 21 (1991), employees of the Auditor General's Office of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania sued Auditor General Hafer for damages in federal court under Section 1983. The suit alleged that Hafer had dismissed the employees because of their Democratic political affiliation and because they had supported her opponent during the election for office. The district court dismissed the claims on the ground that under Will, Hafer could not be held liable for damages for employment decisions that she made in her official capacity as Auditor General. The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed the dismissal, finding that plaintiffs sought damages from Hafer in her personal, as opposed to official capacity.
Before the Supreme Court, Hafer argued that the distinction between official and personal capacity suits turns not on the capacity in which the state official is sued, but rather rests on the capacity in which the officer acted when injuring the plaintiff. Hafer interpreted Will as holding that state officials may not be held accountable for damages in their personal capacity for actions taken in their official capacity. The Supreme Court, however, rejected Hafer's construction of Will:
Will itself makes clear that the distinction between official-capacity suits and personal-capacity suits is more than "a mere pleading device." [Will, 491 U.S. at 71]. State officers sued for damages in their official capacity are not "persons" for purposes of the suit because they assume the identity of the government that employs them. Ibid. By contrast, officers sued in their personal capacity come to court as individuals. A government official in the role of personal-capacity defendant thus fits comfortably within the statutory term "person." Cf. Id., at 71 n.10 ("A state official in his or her official capacity, when sued for injunctive relief, would be a person under §1983 because ‘official capacity actions for prospective relief are not treated as actions against the State.'") (quoting Graham
* * * * * Through §1983, Congress sought "to give a remedy to parties deprived of constitutional rights, privileges and immunities by an official's abuse of his position." Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167, 172, 5. L. Ed. 2d 492, 81 S. Ct. 473 (1961). Accordingly, it authorized suits to redress deprivations of civil rights by persons acting "under color of any [state] statute, ordinance, regulation, custom or usage." 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The requirement of action under color of state law means that Hafer may be liable for discharging respondents precisely because of her authority as Auditor General. We cannot accept the novel proposition that this same official authority insulates Hafer from suit.
Hafer, 502 U.S. at 27-28 .
The Court also spurned Hafer's proffered distinction between a) actions outside the official's authority or not essential to the operation of state government, which can subject the official to personal liability under Section 1983, and b) actions both within the official's authority and necessary to the performance of governmental functions, which should be considered acts of the State and thus cannot give rise to a personal-capacity action:
The distinction Hafer urges finds no support in the broad language of § 1983. To the contrary, it ignores our holding that Congress enacted § 1983 "to enforce provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment against those who carry a badge of authority of a State and represent it in some capacity, whether they act in accordance with their authority or misuse it." Scheuer v. Rhodes
Hafer, 502 U.S. at 28-29.
Finally, the Court dismissed Hafer's argument that under Will, the Eleventh Amendment prohibits personal-capacity suits against state officials in federal court because holding individual officers liable for damages infringes on state sovereignty by rendering government less effective:
To be sure, imposing liability on state officers may hamper their performance of public duties. But such concerns are properly addressed within the framework of our personal immunity jurisprudence . . . . Insofar as respondents seek damages against Hafer personally, the Eleventh Amendment does not restrict their ability to sue in federal court.
Hafer, 502 U.S. at 30-31.
The court of appeals affirmed dismissal of the complaint:
Cf. Tuttle
Would plaintiff be able to recover damages from the individual officer? Is injunctive relief available? See Chapter V(B), infra.
Davis, 657 F. Supp. at 403. In a footnote, the Davis court identified the net result were they to exonerate the City for acting in accordance with state law:
Davis, 657 F. Supp. at 403 n. 6. See also Evers v. County of Custer Most certainly, Will's holding does not rest directly on the Eleventh Amendment. . . We considered the Eleventh Amendment in Will only because the fact that Congress did not intend to override state immunity when it enacted §1983 was relevant to statutory construction. . . .
, 928 F. 2d 788 (7th Cir. 1991), plaintiff filed a Section 1983 action for damages alleging that the City was liable for the actions of its police officer who, believing rings displayed in the plaintiff's store had been stolen, seized the rings and returned them to whom the officer believed to be the true owner. Plaintiff asserted that because the officer's actions were taken pursuant to a state law that authorized the seizure and transfer of the property without a pre-disposition hearing, the City was liable for its policy of enforcing those state statutes.
It is difficult to imagine a municipal policy more innocuous and constitutionally permissible, and whose causal connection to the alleged violation is more attenuated, than the "policy" of enforcing state law. If the language and standards from Monell are not to become a dead letter, such a "policy" simply cannot be sufficient to ground liability against a municipality.
, 476 U.S. at 823:
Obviously, if one retreats far enough from a constitutional violation some municipal "policy" can be identified behind almost any such harm inflicted by a municipal official . . . . But Monell must be taken to require proof of a city policy different in kind from [the policy of establishing a police force] before a claim can be sent to a jury on the theory that a particular violation was "caused" by the municipal "policy." At the very least there must be an affirmative link between the policy and the particular constitutional violation alleged.
, 657 F. Supp. 396 (D. N.J. 1987), the court rejected the City's contention that it could not be held liable in damages for a strip search of an inmate in a county jail that was mandated by a state regulation:
[W]e believe that a municipality should be held liable under § 1983 when it officially adopts a policy that subsequently is declared unconstitutional, notwithstanding the fact that the policy was mandated by state law, and we so hold. . . . [A] holding contrary to the one we reach would be palpably inconsistent with the underlying purpose of § 1983, a statute designed to insure that victims of unconstitutional state action are compensated for the violation of their rights, and one that, as such, must be liberally construed. In light of these factors, the Supreme Court held in Owen v. City of Independence . . . that municipalities are not entitled to qualified immunity based on the good faith of their officials, reasoning that "even where some constitutional development could not have been foreseen by municipal officials, it is fairer to allocate any resulting financial loss to the inevitable costs of government borne by all the taxpayers, than to allow its impact to be felt solely by those whose rights, albeit newly recognized, have been violated." . . . Faced with a choice between depriving victims of constitutional violations of recovery and imposing liability without any real fault on local governments, the Owen court, in view of the remedial purposes of § 1983, chose the latter course. Our holding today is motivated by similar policy considerations.
Were we to immunize municipalities in the circumstances presented in this case, plaintiffs whose constitutional rights are violated through the execution of state mandated municipal policies frequently would be unable to recover damages; municipal officials often may be shielded from liability in their personal capacities under the qualified immunity defense, and the Eleventh Amendment prohibits private actions for damages against the state in federal court . . . .
, 745 F. 2d 1196, 1203-04 (9th Cir. 1984) (County is liable for actions mandated by state law; "The policies discussed by the Supreme Court in Owen fully support the imposition of liability on the County.").