Whether a citizen may sue his own State directly in federal circuit court on a claim arising under the Constitution or laws of the United States, without the State’s consent.
Holding
No. A State retains sovereign immunity from a direct suit by one of its own citizens in federal court unless it consents to be sued.
Reasoning
Although Article III extends the federal judicial power to cases arising under the Constitution, laws, and treaties of the United States, that general grant does not create jurisdiction over a type of action that was unknown to the law: a private individual’s direct suit against a sovereign State without its consent. The Court treated sovereign immunity as a foundational limit on judicial power, not merely as an exception applicable when jurisdiction rests on the parties’ citizenship.
The Eleventh Amendment expressly bars suits against a State by citizens of another State and foreign citizens or subjects. But the Court read the Amendment in light of the constitutional structure and the public reaction to Chisholm v. Georgia, which had permitted such a suit before the Amendment’s adoption. In the Court’s view, the Amendment confirmed the broader principle that the Constitution was not understood to subject unconsenting States to private suits in federal court.
The Court found it implausible that the ratifying public would have forbidden suits by out-of-state and foreign citizens while silently leaving States vulnerable to the same federal claims when brought by their own citizens. Such a reading would produce the anomalous result that a State could be sued in federal court by its own citizens even though it could not be sued there by outsiders and had not consented to suit in its own courts.
Historical understandings reinforced that conclusion. The Court relied on Justice Iredell’s dissent in Chisholm, as well as statements by Hamilton, Madison, and Marshall, all of whom described a sovereign State as not ordinarily amenable to an individual’s suit without consent. The Court concluded that Article III should not be read to create that extraordinary remedy by implication.
The jurisdictional statute likewise gave circuit courts jurisdiction concurrent with state courts over civil suits arising under federal law. Because Louisiana’s own courts lacked authority to entertain a private suit against the State without its consent, the Court reasoned that Congress had not used this concurrent-jurisdiction language to give federal circuit courts a novel power to hear such suits.
The Court declined to treat language in Cohens v. Virginia as controlling. Cohens involved appellate review of a state-court judgment, not an original action demanding relief from a State. A writ of error reviewing a judgment obtained by a State does not assert a new claim against the State in the same way that Hans’s direct action for payment did.
The Court emphasized that sovereign immunity did not make state contracts legally meaningless in every respect. A State cannot, through later legislation, validly destroy property rights already acquired under its grants or contracts; affected persons may judicially resist unlawful invasions of those rights. But a direct action compelling the State itself to pay its debts remains unavailable unless the State has consented to suit.