Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida

Majority reasoning

The Court reasoned that Congress must both clearly state its intent to strip state immunity and act under a constitutional provision that actually grants it that power; here Congress clearly intended abrogation, but the Indian Commerce Clause does not grant that power. The majority overruled Pennsylvania v. Union Gas Co., finding its plurality rationale for allowing abrogation under the Interstate Commerce Clause was never adopted by a majority of the Court, conflicted with a century of sovereign immunity doctrine rooted in Hans v. Louisiana, and improperly let Article I expand jurisdiction that Article III and the Eleventh Amendment limit. On the Ex parte Young question, the majority held that because Congress created a detailed, limited remedial scheme in the statute itself (culminating in Secretary of the Interior involvement rather than full judicial remedies), allowing suit against the governor under Ex parte Young would let tribes bypass that limited scheme and expose officials to broader remedies than Congress intended. The majority directly answered Justice Stevens's point about foreclosing bankruptcy, copyright, and antitrust enforcement against states by noting that Ex parte Young suits against officers, federal government suits, and Supreme Court review of state court judgments remain available, and that no established tradition of enforcing those statutes against states previously existed anyway.

Dissent reasoning

Justice Stevens argued that Congress has always been understood to have the power to subject states to suit by their own citizens, as reflected in Chisholm v. Georgia, Hans v. Louisiana, Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, and Union Gas, and that the majority's rule illogically preserves abrogation power only under the Fourteenth Amendment while eliminating it everywhere else, potentially foreclosing enforcement of federal bankruptcy, copyright, and antitrust laws against states. Justice Souter, joined by Ginsburg and Breyer, argued at length that the Eleventh Amendment's text and history show it applies only to diversity suits, not federal-question suits, so Hans was already an unwarranted extension of immunity into federal-question cases, and that constitutionalizing that immunity against congressional abrogation compounds the original error by treating a common-law doctrine the Framers never meant to be permanent as an unamendable constitutional rule. Souter separately argued that even accepting Hans, the majority erred in refusing to apply Ex parte Young against the governor, because Young is a foundational, centuries-old doctrine allowing suits against officers to enforce federal law that Congress gave no clear indication it meant to displace, and the statute's language and structure are fully compatible with an officer suit.