holding that sovereign immunity prevents suit to enjoin state officer from bringing tax collection suits against persons who had paid taxes with bond coupons, where such collection was alleged to breach bondholder’s contract, and where specific performance of acceptance of coupons was requested
How later courts described this case
- holding that sovereign immunity prevents suit to enjoin state officer from bringing tax collection suits against persons who had paid taxes with bond coupons, where such collection was alleged to breach bondholder’s contract, and where specific performance of acceptance of coupons was requested
- interpreting the Eleventh Amendment “not literally ... but to accomplish the substance of its purpose”; holding that federal court lacked jurisdiction to enjoin attorneys from bringing suit against taxpayers of Virginia for delinquent taxes owed under bond coupons, since the state was the real party in interest affected by the decree
- holding a claim for specific performance of a contract by state officials barred by the state’s sovereign immunity
- noting that the right to be free from such proceedings is the “very object and purpose” of sovereign immunity
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Mr. Justice Field
concurring.
I concur in the judgment discharging from arrest and imprisonment the Attorney General of Virginia, and other officers of the State, who were adjudged by the Circuit Court to be guilty of contempt in refusing to' obey the order of that court in the case of Cooper v. Marye, and were fined, and committed until the fine should be paid, and they should purge themselves of their contempt by doing the acts commanded. I also concur in the main- position stated in the opinion of the court, upon which the discharge of the petitioners is.ordered; namely: that the case of Cooper v. Marye was in law and fact a suit by subjects of a foreign state against the State of Virginia. To a suit of that character the judicial power of the United States cannot, by the Eleventh Amendment. of the Constitution, be extended. The object of that suit was to enjoin the Attorney General and the Commonwealth’s attorneys of the several counties, cities, and towns of Virginia from bringing any suits in the name of the Commonwealth to enforce the collection of taxes, for the payment of which coupons originally attached to her bonds had been tendered. To enjoin the officers of the Commonwealth,- charged with the supervision and management of legal proceedings in her behalf, from bringing suits in her name, is nothing less than to enjoin the Commonwealth, for only by her officers can such suits be instituted and prosecuted. This seems to me an obvious conclusion.
The reason given in the bill in Cooper v. Marye, for seeking the injunction, is that the State has passed various. acts creating impediments in- the way of holders of coupons establishing their genuineness, by which their value will be practically destroyed, and the performance of these obligations be evaded, unless the officers of the State are restrained from prosecuting such suits. The numerous devices to which the State has resorted in order to escape from her obligations under the *509 forms of law m?v., it is true, seriously embarrass the coupon holder in the asgvHion of his claims; but that is not a sufficient reason for denying to the State the right to prosecute her demands for taxes in her own courts. If the obstacles to the maintenance of the claims of the coupon holder, presented by the State legislation, are repugnant to the Constitution and laws of the United States, we cannot assume in advance that they will be sustained by the courts of Virginia when the coupons tendered are produced in the suits mentioned, and for that reason deny to her a hearing there upon her own demands. If they should be sustained, a remedy may be found in this tribunal, where decisions in conflict with the Constitution and laws of the United States may be reviewed and corrected.
There are many cases — indeed, they are of frequent occurrence — where officers of the State, acting.under legislation in conflict with the Constitution and laws of the United States — may be restrained by the Federal courts, as where those officers attempt, by virtue of such legislation, to take private property for public use without offering compensation, or in other ways to deprive one of the use and enjoyment of his property. I do not understand that the opinion of the court is against this doctrine; but, on the contrary, that it is recognized and approved. There is a wide difference between restraining officers of the State from interfering in such cases with the property of the citizen, and restraining them from prosecuting a suit in the name of the State in her own courts to collect an alleged claim. Her courts are at all times as open to her for the prosecution of her demands as they are open to her citizens for the prosecution of their claims.
I, however, make this special concurrence in the opinion of the majority because of language in it expressing approval of the positions taken by the court in Louisiana v. Jumel, from which I dissented — not agreeing with the majority either in the statement of the object of that case, or in the law applicable to it. 107 U.S. 728 . I considered that case as brought to compel the officers of the State to do what she had by her laws and former constitution consented they might *510 by the judicial tribunals be required to do. I expressed, at the time, against the majority of the court, my conviction of the invalidity and unconstitutionality of the ordinance of repudiation embodied in the new constitution of Louisiana. At the same time I also expressed in Antoni v. Greenhow my opinion of the equally invalid legislation of Virginia. 107 U.S. 784 . I adhere to my dissenting opinions in those cases, and in concurring in the judgment in this case I do not in any respect depart from or qualify what I there said.