holding FMLA family leave provi- sion validly abrogated state sovereign immunity: “pervasive sex-role stereotype that caring for family members is women’s work,” in turn “foster[ing] employers’ stereotypical views about women’s commitment to work and their value as employees”
How later courts described this case
- holding FMLA family leave provi- sion validly abrogated state sovereign immunity: “pervasive sex-role stereotype that caring for family members is women’s work,” in turn “foster[ing] employers’ stereotypical views about women’s commitment to work and their value as employees”
- holding that Congress constitutionally abrogated sovereign immunity for claims seeking money damages for violations of the “family care” provision
- concluding that “[t]he record in this case supports the postulate that women experience unwanted intimate touching by men differently from men subject to comparable touching by women.”
- finding an intent to abrogate state sovereign immunity in the Family and Medical Leave Act, 29 U.S.C. § 2617 , where the act expressly allowed a suit against a “public agency,” defined “to include both ‘the government of a State or political subdivision thereof’ and ‘any agency of . . . a State, or a political subdivision of a State’ ” (quoting 29 U.S.C. §§ 203 (x), 2611(4)(A)(iii)) (alterations in original)
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Justice Souter,
with whom Justice Ginsburg and Justice Breyer join, concurring.
Even on this Court’s view of the scope of congressional power under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, see Board of Trustees of Univ. of Ala. v. Garrett, 531 U. S. 356 (2001); Kimel v. Florida Bd. of Regents, 528 U. S. 62 (2000); Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd. v. College Savings Bank, 527 U. S. 627 (1999), the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 is undoubtedly valid legislation, and application of the Act to the States is constitutional; the same conclusions follow a fortiori from my own understanding of § 5, see Garrett, supra, at 376 (Breyer, J., dissenting); Kimel, supra, at 92 (Stevens, J., dissenting); Florida Prepaid, supra, at 648 (Stevens, J., dissenting); see also Katzenbach v. Morgan, 384 U. S. 641, 650-651 (1966). I join the Court’s opinion here without conceding the dissenting positions just cited or the dissenting views expressed in Seminole Tribe of Fla. v. Florida, 517 U. S. 44, 100 (1996) (Souter, J., dissenting).