# Coleman v. Court of Appeals of Maryland

> Supreme Court of the United States · March 20, 2012 · 566 U.S. 30

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9485551

## Case

- **Full name:** COLEMAN v. COURT OF APPEALS OF MARYLAND Et Al.
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** March 20, 2012
- **Citations:** 566 U.S. 30; 132 S. Ct. 1327; 182 L. Ed. 2d 296; 2012 U.S. LEXIS 2315
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Thomas
- **Judges:** Scalia, Kennedy, Roberts, Thomas, Auto, Scaua, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan
- **Cited by:** 755 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9485551

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- finding 26 2 At the hearing, Plaintiff appeared to argue that she did not amend the complaint to include any 27 individuals because such individuals could not be sued with respect to her state claim, but this is 1 that the FMLA’s “self-care provision is not a valid abrogation …
- holding conclusory allegations that an African American plaintiff was terminated based on his race supported only by comparisons to white coworkers would not survive a motion to dismiss without sufficient pleading to establish that they were actually similarly situated
- stating that because “pregnancy provided a central justification for . . . historic discrimination against women,” Geduldig “was egre- giously wrong to declare that discrimination on the basis of preg- nancy is not discrimination on the basis of sex” (emphasis added)
- holding that there was an insufficient nexus “between self-care leave and gender discrimination by state employers” to validly abrogate state sovereign immunity
- holding that Congress did not abrogate states’ sovereign immunity from suits for money damages under the FMLA’s self-care provision

## Opinion text

Justice Thomas,
concurring.
I join the plurality’s opinion holding that Congress did not validly abrogate the States’ immunity from suit for money damages for violations of the self-care provision of the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA), 29 U. S. C. § 2612 (a)(1)(D). As the plurality explains, this case is distinguishable from Nevada Dept. of Human Resources v. Hibbs, 538 U. S. 721 (2003), which held that Congress validly abrogated the States’ immunity from suit for violations of the FMLA’s family-care provision, § 2612(a)(1)(C). Ante, at 37. I write separately only to reiterate my view that Hibbs was wrongly decided because the family-care provision is not sufficiently linked to a demonstrated pattern of unconstitutional discrimination by the States. See 538 U. S., at 745-754 (Kennedy, J., joined by Scalia and Thomas, JJ., dissenting); Tennessee v. Lane, 541 U. S. 509, 565-566 (2004) (Thomas, J., dissenting). The self-care provision at issue in this ease is even further removed from any such pattern.

---

Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9485551. Public record. Not legal advice.