explaining that the Ex parte Young doctrine carves out only a “narrow” exception to Eleventh Amendment immunity: “It applies only to prospective relief, does not permit judgments against state officers declaring that they violated federal law in the past, and has no application in suits against the States and their agencies, which are barred regardless of the relief sought.”
How later courts described this case
- explaining that the Ex parte Young doctrine carves out only a “narrow” exception to Eleventh Amendment immunity: “It applies only to prospective relief, does not permit judgments against state officers declaring that they violated federal law in the past, and has no application in suits against the States and their agencies, which are barred regardless of the relief sought.”
- finding that a denial of Eleventh Amendment immunity: [1] purports to be a conclusive determination that the State is subject to suit; [2] involves a claim to a fundamental constitutional protection that generally has no bearing on the merits of the underlying action; [3] decreases in value to the State as the litigation proceeds past motion practice
- recognizing that under Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123 (1908), the Eleventh Amendment does not bar official-capacity claims against a state official for prospective declaratory or injunctive relief, and explaining that Ex parte Young “has no application in suits against the States and their agencies, which are barred regardless of the relief sought”
- recognizing that Ex Parte Young “applies only to prospective relief, does not permit judgments against state [or tribal] officers declaring that they violated federal law in the past, and has no application in suits against the States [or here, Tribes] and their agencies, which are barred regardless of the relief sought.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Justice Blackmun,
concurring.
I join the Court’s opinion but write separately to make plain once again my position on one feature. I continue to *148 believe that the Court’s interpretation of the Eleventh Amendment as embodying a broad principle of state immunity from suit in federal court “simply cannot be reconciled with the federal system envisioned by our Basic Document and its Amendments.” Atascadero State Hospital v. Scanlon, 473 U. S. 234, 303 (1985) (Blackmun, J., dissenting). Nevertheless, because I believe that the Eleventh Amendment does preserve a State’s immunity from suit in the limited context of an action by a citizen of another State or of a foreign country on a state-law cause of action brought in federal court, id., at 301 (Brennan, J., dissenting), a claim of immunity under the Eleventh Amendment ought to be appealable immediately. Whether the assertion of an Eleventh Amendment claim is well founded — a matter not before us in this case, see ante, at 141-142, n. 1-is a question separate from the question whether the Eleventh Amendment interests are “too important to be denied review and too independent of the cause itself to require that appellate consideration be deferred until the whole case is adjudicated.” Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp., 337 U. S. 541, 546 (1949). Because I believe that the Eleventh Amendment does guarantee immunity from suit in a narrow class of cases, I concur in the Court’s opinion and judgment that, regardless of the merits, a district court’s denial of a claim of immunity under the Eleventh Amendment should be appealable immediately. See Sullivan v. Finkelstein, 496 U. S. 617, 632 (1990) (opinion concurring in judgment).