California's acceptance of funds and participation in programs funded under the Rehabilitation Act are insufficient to establish that it consented to suit in federal court.
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. Established pursuant to Article III of the U.S. Constitution in 1789, it has original jurisdiction over a small range of cases, such as suits between two or more states, and those involving ambassadors. It also has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all federal court and state court cases that involve a point of federal constitutional or statutory law. The Court has the power of judicial review, the ability to invalidate a statute for violating a provision of the Constitution or an executive act for being unlawful. However, it may act only within the context of a case in an area of law over which it has jurisdiction. The Court may decide cases having political overtones, but it has ruled that it does not have power to decide nonjusticiable political questions. Each year it agrees to hear about 100–150 of the more than 7,000 cases that it is asked to review.
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the Federal Government of the United States. The legislature consists of two chambers: the House of Representatives and the Senate.
The Eleventh Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed by Congress on March 4, 1794, and ratified by the states on February 7, 1795. The Eleventh Amendment restricts the ability of individuals to bring suit against states in federal court.
Ordinarily, sovereign immunity prohibits the states from being sued, and the Eleventh Amendment prohibits states from being sued without consent in federal court; however, there are exceptions. A state can waive its sovereign immunity, and in Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, 427 U.S. 445 (1976), the Supreme Court had emphasized that Congress could abrogate state sovereign immunity pursuant to powers granted it by the Civil War Amendments. The Court noted that Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651 (1974), however, had recognized that "the Eleventh Amendment implicates the fundamental constitutional balance between the Federal Government and the States," Atascadero, at 238, the Court had applied a clear statement rule to waiver. The Court will only deem the state to have waived its immunity when the waiver is couched in "the most express language or by such overwhelming implication from the text as [will] leave no room for any other reasonable construction." Murray v. Wilson Distilling Co., 213 U.S. 151, 171 (1909).
Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, 427 U.S. 445 (1976), was a United States Supreme Court decision that determined that the U.S. Congress has the power to abrogate the Eleventh Amendment sovereign immunity of the states, if this is done pursuant to its Fourteenth Amendment power to enforce upon the states the guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651 (1974), was a United States Supreme Court case that held that the sovereign immunity recognized in the Eleventh Amendment prevented a federal court from ordering a state from paying back funds that had been unconstitutionally withheld from parties to whom they had been due.
In American law, the clear statement rule is a guideline for statutory construction, instructing courts to not interpret a statute in a way that will have particular consequences unless the statute makes unmistakably clear its intent to achieve that result. Such rules "insist that a particular result can be achieved only if the text says so in no uncertain terms." Popkin, Statutes in Court 201 (1999).
In Atascadero, the Court made the rule symmetrical: just as purported waiver requires a clear statement, so too a purported abrogation requires a clear statement. Reiterating its "reluctance to infer that a State's immunity from suit in the federal courts has been negated[,] stem[ming] from recognition of the vital role of the doctrine of sovereign immunity in our federal system," Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman, 465 U.S. 89, 98 (1984) (Pennhurst II), and citing "[t]he fundamental nature of the interests implicated by the Eleventh Amendment," Atascadero, at 242, the court held "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." Id.
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Related Research Articles
Sovereign immunity, or crown immunity, is a legal doctrine by which the sovereign or state cannot commit a legal wrong and is immune from civil suit or criminal prosecution, strictly speaking in modern texts in its own courts. A similar, stronger rule as regards foreign courts is named state immunity.
Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 U.S. 419 (1793), is considered the first United States Supreme Court case of significance and impact. Given its date, there was little available legal precedent. The case was superseded in 1795 by the Eleventh Amendment.
Tennessee v. Lane, 541 U.S. 509 (2004), was a case in the Supreme Court of the United States involving Congress's enforcement powers under section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Board of Trustees of the University of Alabama v. Garrett, 531 U.S. 356 (2001), was a United States Supreme Court case about Congress's enforcement powers under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Supreme Court decided that Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act was unconstitutional, insofar as it allowed states to be sued by private citizens for money damages.
Hans v. Louisiana, 134 U.S. 1 (1890), was a decision of the United States Supreme Court determining that the Eleventh Amendment prohibits the citizen of a U.S. state to sue that state in a federal court. The court left open the question of whether a citizen may sue his or her state in state courts. That ambiguity was resolved in Alden v. Maine (1999), in which the Court held that a state's sovereign immunity forecloses suits against a state government in state court.
Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida, 517 U.S. 44 (1996), was a United States Supreme Court case which held that Article One of the U.S. Constitution did not give the United States Congress the power to abrogate the sovereign immunity of the states that is further protected under the Eleventh Amendment. Such abrogation is permitted where it is necessary to enforce the rights of citizens guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment as per Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, 427 U.S. 445 (1976). The case also held that the doctrine of Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123 (1908), which allows state officials to be sued in their official capacity for prospective injunctive relief, was inapplicable under these circumstances, because any remedy was limited to the one that Congress had provided.
The Abrogation doctrine is a constitutional law doctrine expounding when and how the Congress may waive a state's sovereign immunity and subject it to lawsuits to which the state has not consented.
Central Virginia Community College v. Katz, 546 U.S. 356 (2006), is a United States Supreme Court case holding that the Bankruptcy Clause of the Constitution abrogates state sovereign immunity. It is significant as the only case allowing Congress to use an Article I power to authorize individuals to sue states.
Alden v. Maine, 527 U.S. 706 (1999), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States about whether the United States Congress may use its Article One powers to abrogate a state's sovereign immunity from suits in its own courts, thereby allowing citizens to sue a state in state court without the state's consent.
Kimel v. Florida Board of Regents, 528 U.S. 62 (2000), was a United States Supreme Court case that determined that the Congress's enforcement powers under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution did not extend to the abrogation of state sovereign immunity under the Eleventh Amendment where the discrimination complained of was rationally based on age.
College Savings Bank v. Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Education Expense Board, 527 U.S. 666 (1999), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States relating to the doctrine of sovereign immunity.
Schillinger v. United States, 155 U.S. 163 (1894), is a decision of the United States Supreme Court, holding that a suit for patent infringement cannot be entertained against the United States, because patent infringement is a tort and the United States has not waived sovereign immunity for intentional torts.
In United States law, the federal government as well as state and tribal governments generally enjoy sovereign immunity, also known as governmental immunity, from lawsuits. Local governments in most jurisdictions enjoy immunity from some forms of suit, particularly in tort. The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act provides foreign governments, including state-owned companies, with a related form of immunity—state immunity—that shields them from lawsuits except in relation to certain actions relating to commercial activity in the United States. The principle of sovereign immunity in US law was inherited from the English common law legal maxim rex non potest peccare, meaning "the king can do no wrong." In some situations, sovereign immunity may be waived by law.
C & L Enterprises, Inc. v. Citizen Band, Potawatomi Indian Tribe of Oklahoma, 532 U.S. 411 (2001), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the tribe waived its sovereign immunity when it agreed to a contract containing an arbitration agreement.
United States constitutional law is the body of law governing the interpretation and implementation of the United States Constitution.
The Copyright Remedy Clarification Act (CRCA) is a United States copyright law that attempts to abrogate sovereign immunity of states for copyright infringement. The CRCA amended 17 USC 511(a):
