OCTOBER TERM, 1996
Syllabus
IDAHO ET AL.
v. COEUR D'ALENE TRIBE OF IDAHO ET AL.
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH
CIRCUIT
No. 94-1474. Argued October 16, 1996-Decided June 23, 1997
Alleging ownership in the submerged lands and bed of Lake Coeur
d'Alene and various of its navigable tributaries and effluents
lying within the original boundaries of the Coeur d'Alene
Reservation (the submerged lands), the Coeur d'Alene Tribe and
various of its members (collectively, the Tribe) filed this
federal-court action against the State of Idaho, various state
agencies, and numerous state officials in their individual
capacities. The Tribe sought,
inter alia, a declaratory
judgment establishing its entitlement to the exclusive use and
occupancy and the right to quiet enjoyment of the submerged lands,
a declaration of the invalidity of all Idaho laws, customs, or
usages purporting to regulate those lands, and a preliminary and
permanent injunction prohibiting defendants from taking any action
in violation of the Tribe's rights in the lands. The District Court
dismissed the suit, but the Ninth Circuit affirmed in part,
reversed in part, and remanded. As here relevant, the latter court
agreed with the District Court that the Eleventh Amendment barred
all claims against the State and its agencies, as well as the quiet
title action against the officials. However, it found the doctrine
of
Ex parte Young, 209 U. S. 123, applicable
and allowed the claims for declaratory and injunctive relief
against the officials to proceed insofar as they sought to preclude
continuing violations of federal law. The court reasoned that those
claims are based on Idaho's ongoing interference with the Tribe's
alleged ownership rights, and found it conceivable that the Tribe
could prove facts entitling it to relief on the claims.
Held: The judgment is reversed in part, and the case is
remanded.
42 F.3d
1244, reversed in part and remanded.
JUSTICE KENNEDY delivered the opinion of the Court with respect
to Parts I, II -A, and III, concluding that the Tribe's suit
against the state officials may not proceed in federal court. pp.
267-270, 281-288.
(a) Because States enjoy Eleventh Amendment immunity in suits by
Indian tribes,
Blatchford v.
Native Village of
Noatak, 501 U. S.
775, 782, the present suit is barred unless it falls within the
exception this Court has recognized for certain suits seeking
declaratory and injunctive relief against state officers in their
individual capacities, see,
e. g., Ex parte
262
Young, supra. The Court does not question the continuing
validity of the
Young doctrine, but acknowledges that
questions will arise as to its proper scope and application. In
resolving these questions, the Court must ensure that the sovereign
immunity doctrine remains meaningful, while also giving recognition
to the need to prevent violations of federal law. In a suit
commenced against such officials, even if they are named and served
as individuals, the State itself will have a continuing interest in
the litigation whenever state policies or procedures are at stake.
See,
e. g., Pennhurst State School and Hospital v.
Halderman, 465
U. S. 89, 114, n. 25. Pp. 267-270.
(b) The Tribe may not avoid the Eleventh Amendment bar and avail
itself of the
Young exception in this action. In support of
Young's applicability, the Tribe alleges an ongoing
violation of its property rights under federal law, seeks
prospective injunctive relief, and attempts to rely on the
plurality decision in
Florida Dept. of State v.
Treasure
Salvors, Inc., 458 U. S. 670. The latter
case is not helpful because the state officials there were acting
beyond their state-conferred authority, id., at 696-697, a theory
the Tribe does not even attempt to pursue in this case. Moreover,
although a request for prospective relief from an allegedly ongoing
federal-law violation is ordinarily sufficient to invoke the
Young fiction, this case is unusual in that the Tribe's suit
is the functional equivalent of a quiet title action implicating
special sovereignty interests. This is especially troubling when
coupled with the farreaching and invasive relief the Tribe seeks,
which would shift substantially all benefits of ownership and
control of vast areas from the State to the Tribe, and thereby
entail consequences going well beyond those typically present in a
real property quiet title action. Furthermore, the requested relief
would divest the State of its control over lands underlying
navigable waters, which have historically been considered uniquely
"sovereign lands," see,
e. g., Utah Div. of State Lands v.
United States, 482 U. S. 193, 195-198,
title to which is conferred on the States by the Constitution
itself, see
Oregon ex rel. State Land Ed. v.
Corvallis
Sand &
Gravel Co., 429 U. S. 363, 374.
Indeed, Idaho law views its interest in the submerged lands in such
terms. Under these particular and special circumstances, the
Young exception is inapplicable. The dignity and status of
its statehood allows Idaho to rely on its Eleventh Amendment
immunity and to insist upon responding to these claims in its own
courts, which are open to hear and determine the case.
pp.281-288.
KENNEDY, J., announced the judgment of the Court and delivered
the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, II-A, and III, in
which REHN-
263
QUIST, C. J., and O'CONNOR, SCALIA, and THOMAS, JJ., joined, and
an opinion with respect to Parts II-B, II-C, and II-D, in which
REHNQUIST, C. J., joined. O'CONNOR, J., filed an opinion concurring
in part and concurring in the judgment, in which SCALIA and THOMAS,
JJ., joined,
post, p. 288. SOUTER, J., filed a dissenting
opinion, in which STEVENS, GINSBURG, and BREYER, JJ., joined,
post, p. 297.
Clive J.
Strong, Deputy Attorney General of Idaho,
argued the cause for petitioners. With him on the briefs were
Alan G.
Lance, Attorney General, and
Steven W
Strack, Deputy Attorney General.
Raymond C.
Givens argued the cause for
respondents.
With him on the brief were David J. Bederman and Shannon D.
Work. *
JUSTICE KENNEDY announced the judgment of the Court and
delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts
*
Richard Ruda and
James I. Crowley filed a brief
for the Council of State Governments et al. as
amici curiae
urging reversal.
Briefs of amicus curiae urging affirmance were filed for the
United States by Acting Solicitor General Dellinger, Assistant
Attorney General Schiffer, Deputy Solicitor General Kneedler,
Jeffrey P. Minear, Anne S. Almy, and Edward J. Shawaker; and for
the American Civil Liberties Union by Robin L. Dahlberg and Steven
R. Shapiro.
Briefs of
amici curiae were filed for the State of
California et al. by
Daniel E. Lungren, Attorney General of
California,
Roderick E. Walston, Chief Assistant Attorney
General, and
Jan S.
Stevens, Assistant Attorney
General, joined by the Attorneys General for their respective
States as follows:
Jeff Sessions of Alabama,
Bruce M.
Botelho of Alaska,
Grant Woods of Arizona,
Winston
Bryant of Arkansas,
Gale A. Norton of Colorado,
Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut,
Robert A.
Butterworth of Florida,
Margery S.
Bronster of
Hawaii,
Thomas J.
Miller of Iowa,
Frank J.
Kelley of Michigan,
Hubert H. Humphrey III of
Minnesota,
Jeremiah W Nixon of Missouri,
Joseph P.
Mazurek of Montana,
Don Stenberg of Nebraska,
Frankie
Sue Del Papa of Nevada,
Dennis C.
Vacco of New
York,
Betty D. Montgomery of Ohio,
W A. Drew
Edmondson of Oklahoma,
Mark Barnett of South Dakota,
Jan Graham of Utah,
Christine Q Gregoire of
Washington, and
James E. Doyle of Wisconsin; and for the
StockbridgeMunsee Indian Community by
Richard
Dauphinais.
264
I, II-A, and III, and an opinion with respect to Parts II-B,
II-C, and II-D, in which THE CHIEF JUSTICE joins.
In the northern region of Idaho, close by the Coeur d'Alene
Mountains which are part of Bitterroot Range, lies tranquil Lake
Coeur d'Alene. One of the Nation's most beautiful lakes, it is some
24 miles long and 1 to 3 miles wide. The Spokane River originates
here and thence flows west, while the lake in turn is fed by other
rivers and streams, including Coeur d'Alene River which flows to it
from the east, as does the forested Saint Joe River which begins
high in the Bitterroots and gathers their waters along its 130-mile
journey. To the south of the lake lies the more populated part of
the Coeur d'Alene Reservation. Whether the Coeur d'Alene Tribe's
ownership extends to the banks and submerged lands of the lake and
various of these rivers and streams, or instead ownership is vested
in the State of Idaho, is the underlying dispute. We are limited
here, however, to the important, preliminary question whether the
Eleventh Amendment bars a federal court from hearing the Tribe's
claim.
I
Alleging ownership in the submerged lands and bed of Lake Coeur
d'Alene and of the various navigable rivers and streams that form
part of its water system, the Coeur d'Alene Tribe, a federally
recognized Tribe, together with various individual Tribe members,
sued in federal court. As there is no relevant distinction between
the Tribe and those of its members who have joined the suit, for
purposes of the issue we decide, we refer to them all as the Tribe.
The Coeur d'Alene Reservation consists of some 13,032 acres of
tribal land, 55,583 acres of allotted land, and 330 Government
owned acres. Statistical Record of Native North Americans 53 (M.
Raddy ed. 1995). The Tribe claimed the beneficial interest, subject
to the trusteeship of the United States, in the beds and banks of
all navigable watercourses
265
and waters (the "submerged lands") within the original
boundaries of the Coeur d'Alene Reservation, as defined by
Executive Order on November 8,1873. Exec. Order of Nov. 8, 1873,
reprinted in 1 C. Kappler, Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties 837
(1904). The area in dispute includes the banks and beds and
submerged lands of Lake Coeur d'Alene and some portions of the
various rivers and streams we have described. In the alternative,
the Tribe claimed ownership of the submerged lands pursuant to
unextinguished aboriginal title. A state forum was available, see
Idaho Code § 5-328 (1990), but the Tribe brought this action in the
United States District Court for the District of Idaho.
The suit named the State of Idaho, various state agencies, and
numerous state officials in their individual capacities. In
addition to its title claims, the Tribe further sought a
declaratory judgment to establish its entitlement to the exclusive
use and occupancy and the right to quiet enjoyment of the submerged
lands as well as a declaration of the invalidity of all Idaho
statutes, ordinances, regulations, customs, or usages which purport
to regulate, authorize, use, or affect in any way the submerged
lands. Finally, it sought a preliminary and permanent injunction
prohibiting defendants from regulating, permitting, or taking any
action in violation of the Tribe's rights of exclusive use and
occupancy, quiet enjoyment, and other ownership interest in the
submerged lands along with an award for costs and attorney's fees
and such other relief as the court deemed appropriate.
The defendants moved to dismiss the Tribe's complaint on
Eleventh Amendment immunity grounds and for failure to state a
claim upon which relief could be granted. The court held the
Eleventh Amendment barred the claims against Idaho and the
agencies. It concluded further that the action against the
officials for quiet title and declaratory relief was barred by the
Eleventh Amendment because these claims were the functional
equivalents of a damages award against the State. It dismissed the
claim for injunctive relief
266
against the officials, on the merits, since Idaho was in
rightful possession of the submerged lands as a matter of law. It
explained that Idaho acquired ownership of the submerged lands upon
its statehood in 1890 under the equal footing doctrine. The court
did not discuss the Tribe's claim to aboriginal title. 798 F. Supp.
1443 (1992).
The Ninth Circuit affirmed in part, reversed in part, and
remanded.
42 F.3d
1244 (1994). It agreed with the District Court that the
Eleventh Amendment barred all claims against the State and its
agencies, as well as the quiet title action against the officials.
The Court of Appeals found the
Ex parte Young, 209 U. S. 123 (1908),
doctrine applicable and allowed the claims for declaratory and
injunctive relief against the officials to proceed insofar as they
sought to preclude continuing violations of federal law. The
requested declaratory and injunctive relief, the Court of Appeals
reasoned, is based upon Idaho's ongoing interference with the
Tribe's alleged ownership rights premised on the 1873 Executive
Order as later ratified by federal statute. See Act of Mar. 3,
1891, ch. 543, § 19, 26 Stat. 1026-1029. It further found it
conceivable that the Tribe could prove facts entitling it to
relief. It reversed the District Court's dismissal of the
declaratory and injunctive relief claims and ordered the case
remanded. It also remanded for consideration of the Tribe's claim
for declaratory relief based on aboriginal title. We granted
certiorari, 517 U. S. 1132 (1996), to consider whether the suit for
declaratory and injunctive relief based on the Tribe's purported
beneficial interest in title may proceed, and we now reverse in
part.
After issuance of the District Court's opinion the United States
filed suit against the State of Idaho on behalf of the Tribe
seeking to quiet title to approximately a third of the land covered
by this suit.
United States v.
Idaho, No. 940328 (D.
Idaho, filed July 21, 1994). The Government's separate suit is
still pending and is not implicated here.
267
II A
The grant of federal judicial power is cast in terms of its
reach or extent. Article III, § 2, of the Constitution provides the
"judicial Power shall extend" to the cases it enumerates, including
"all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution
[and] the Laws of the United States." The Eleventh Amendment, too,
employs the term "extend." I t provides:
"The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed
to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted
against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or
by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State."
This point of commonality could suggest that the Eleventh
Amendment, like the grant of Article III, § 2, jurisdiction, is
cast in terms of reach or competence, so the federal courts are
altogether disqualified from hearing certain suits brought against
a State. This interpretation, however, has been neither our
tradition nor the accepted construction of the Amendment's text.
Rather, a State can waive its Eleventh Amendment protection and
allow a federal court to hear and decide a case commenced or
prosecuted against it. The Amendment, in other words, enacts a
sovereign immunity from suit, rather than a nonwaivable limit on
the Federal Judiciary's subject-matter jurisdiction. The immunity
is one the States enjoy save where there has been" 'a surrender of
this immunity in the plan of the convention.'" Prin
cipality of
Monaco v.
Mississippi, 292 U. S. 313, 322-323
(1934) (quoting The Federalist No. 81).
The Court's recognition of sovereign immunity has not been
limited to the suits described in the text of the Eleventh
Amendment. To respect the broader concept of immunity, implicit in
the Constitution, which we have regarded
268
the Eleventh Amendment as evidencing and exemplifying, we have
extended a State's protection from suit to suits brought by the
State's own citizens.
Hans v.
Louisiana, 134 U. S. 1
(1890). Furthermore, the dignity and respect afforded a State,
which the immunity is designed to protect, are placed in jeopardy
whether or not the suit is based on diversity jurisdiction. As a
consequence, suits invoking the federal-question jurisdiction of
Article III courts may also be barred by the Amendment.
Seminole
Tribe of Fla. v.
Florida, 517 U. S. 44 (1996).
In extended criticisms of the Court's recognition that the
immunity can extend to suits brought by a State's own citizens and
to suits premised on federal questions, some of them as recent as
last Term, see id., at 83-93 (STEVENS, J., dissenting); id., at
109-110 (SOUTER, J., dissenting), various dissenting and concurring
opinions have urged a change in direction. See,
e. g.,
Atascadero State Hospital v.
Scanlon, 473 U. S. 234, 247 (1985)
(Brennan, J., dissenting). Were we to abandon our understanding of
the Eleventh Amendment as reflecting a broader principle of
sovereign immunity, the Tribe's suit, which is based on its
purported federal property rights, might proceed. These criticisms
and proposed doctrinal revisions, however, have not found
acceptance with a majority of the Court. We adhere to our
precedent.
Under well-established principles, the Coeur d'Alene Tribe, and,
a fortiori, its members, are subject to the Eleventh
Amendment. In
Blatchford v.
Native Village of Noatak,
501 U. S. 775,
779-782 (1991), we rejected the contention that sovereign immunity
only restricts suits by individuals against sovereigns, not by
sovereigns against sovereigns. Since the plan of the Convention did
not surrender Indian tribes' immunity for the benefit of the
States, we reasoned that the States likewise did not surrender
their immunity for the benefit of the tribes. Indian tribes, we
therefore concluded, should be accorded the same status as foreign
sover-
269
eigns, against whom States enjoy Eleventh Amendment immunity.
Id., at 782.
The Tribe's suit, accordingly, is barred by Idaho's Eleventh
Amendment immunity unless it falls within the exception this Court
has recognized for certain suits seeking declaratory and injunctive
relief against state officers in their individual capacities. See
Ex parte Young, 209 U. S. 123 (1908). The
Young exception to sovereign immunity was an important part
of our jurisprudence when the Court adhered to its precedents in
the face of the criticisms we have mentioned, and when the Court,
overruling
Pennsylvania v.
Union Gas Co.,
491 U. S. 1 (1989), held
that Congress, in the exercise of its power to regulate commerce
with Indian tribes, may not abrogate state sovereign immunity.
Seminole Tribe, supra, at 71, n. 14. We do not, then,
question the continuing validity of the
Ex parte Young
doctrine. Of course, questions will arise as to its proper scope
and application. In resolving these questions we must ensure that
the doctrine of sovereign immunity remains meaningful, while also
giving recognition to the need to prevent violations of federal
law.
When suit is commenced against state officials, even if they are
named and served as individuals, the State itself will have a
continuing interest in the litigation whenever state policies or
procedures are at stake. This commonsense observation of the
State's real interest when its officers are named as individuals
has not escaped notice or comment from this Court, either before or
after
Young. See,
e. g., Osborn v.
Bank of United
States, 9 Wheat. 738, 846-847 (1824) (stating that the State's
interest in the suit was so "direct" that "perhaps no decree ought
to have been pronounced in the cause, until the State was before
the court") (Marshall, C. J.);
Pennhurst State School and
Hospital v.
Halderman, 465 U. S. 89, 114, n. 25
(1984) (noting that
Young rests on a fictional distinction
between the official and the State); see also
Florida Dept. of
State v.
Treasure Salvors, Inc., 458
270
u. S. 670, 685 (1982) (opinion of STEVENS, J.) (recognizing the
irony that a state official's conduct may be considered" 'state
action'" for Fourteenth Amendment purposes yet not for purposes of
the Eleventh Amendment). Indeed, the suit in
Young, which
sought to enjoin the state attorney general from enforcing state
law, implicated substantial state interests. 209 U. S., at 174
("[T]he manifest, indeed the avowed and admitted, object of seeking
[the requested] relief [is]
to tie the hands of the
State") (Harlan, J., dissenting). We agree with these
observations.
To interpret
Young to permit a federal-court action to
proceed in every case where prospective declaratory and injunctive
relief is sought against an officer, named in his individual
capacity, would be to adhere to an empty formalism and to undermine
the principle, reaffirmed just last Term in
Seminole Tribe,
that Eleventh Amendment immunity represents a real limitation on a
federal court's federal-question jurisdiction. The real interests
served by the Eleventh Amendment are not to be sacrificed to
elementary mechanics of captions and pleading. Application of the
Young exception must reflect a proper understanding of its
role in our federal system and respect for state courts instead of
a reflexive reliance on an obvious fiction. See,
e. g.,
Pennhurst, supra, at 102-103, 114, n. 25 (explaining that the
limitation in
Edelman v.
Jordan, 415 U. S. 651 (1974), of
Young to prospective relief represented a refusal to apply
the fiction in every conceivable circumstance).
B
Putting aside the acts of state officials which are plainly
ultra vires under state law itself, see
Pennhurst, supra, at
101-102, n. 11, there are, in general, two instances where
Young has been applied. The first is where there is no state
forum available to vindicate federal interests, thereby placing
upon Article III courts the special obligation to ensure the
supremacy of federal statutory and constitutional law. This is a
most important application of the
Ex parte Young
271
doctrine and is exemplified by the facts in Young itself. See
209 U. S., at 146 ("The necessary effect and result of [the
challenged] legislation must be to preclude a resort to the courts
(either state or Federal) for the purpose of testing its
validity").
As is well known, the ultimate question in Young was whether the
State's attorney general could enforce a state ratesetting scheme
said by the objecting shareholders of railroad companies to be
unconstitutional. The shareholders sought a federal injunction
against Attorney General Young, prohibiting enforcement of the rate
scheme. Attempting to show the lack of necessity for federal
intervention, Young maintained the shareholders could wait until a
state enforcement proceeding was brought against the railroads and
then test the law's validity by raising constitutional defenses.
The Court rejected the argument, first because a single violation
might not bring a prompt prosecution; and second because the
penalties for violations were so severe a railroad official could
not test the law without grave risk of heavy fines and
imprisonment. The Court added that a federal suit for injunctive
relief would be "undoubtedly the most convenient, the most
comprehensive and the most orderly way in which the rights of all
parties can be properly, fairly and adequately passed upon."
Id., at 166.
Where there is no available state forum the Young rule has
special significance. In that instance providing a federal forum
for a justiciable controversy is a specific application of the
principle that the plan of the Convention contemplates a regime in
which federal guarantees are enforceable so long as there is a
justiciable controversy. The Federalist No. 80, p. 475 (C. Rossiter
ed. 1961) (A. Hamilton) ("[T]here ought always to be a
constitutional method of giving efficacy to constitutional
provisions"). We, of course, express no opinion as to the
circumstances in which the unavailability of injunctive relief in
state court would raise constitutional concerns under current
doctrine.
272
Young was not an isolated example of an instance where a
state forum was unavailable. See,
e. g., Osborn, supra, at
842-843 (explaining that if it was within the power of the
plaintiff to make the State a party to the suit it would "certainly
[be] true" that a suit against state officials would be barred, but
if the "real principal" is "exempt from all judicial process" an
officer suit could proceed);
United States v.
Lee,
106 U. S. 196
(1882) (permitting suit for injunctive relief to proceed where
there did not otherwise exist a legal remedy for the alleged
trespass);
Poindexter v.
Greenhow, 114 U. S. 270, 299 (1885)
(explaining that the state-law remedy for Virginia's
unconstitutional refusal to accept its own bond coupons in
satisfaction of state taxes was, in fact, "no remedy"). In these
early cases, the Court, although expressing concern over the lack
of a forum, did not rely on the lack of a forum as its doctrinal
basis. After abandonment of
Osborn's rule that a suit was
not against the State so long as the State was not a party of
record, see
Governor of Georgia v.
Madrazo, 1 Pet.
110, 124 (1828), the
Young fiction was employed where "the
act complained of, considered apart from the official authority
alleged as its justification, and as the personal act of the
individual defendant, constituted a violation of right for which
the plaintiff was entitled to a remedy at law or in equity against
the wrongdoer in his individual character."
In re Ayers,
123 U. S. 443,
502 (1887). In other words, where the individual would have been
liable at common law for his actions, sovereign immunity was no bar
regardless of the person's official position. See,
e. g., Lee,
supra, at 221 (common-law tort of trespass);
Belknap v.
Schild, 161 U.
S. 10, 18 (1896) (common-law tort of patent infringement);
Tindal v.
Wesley, 167 U. S. 204, 221-222
(1897) (common-law tort of trespass);
Scully v.
Bird,
209 U. S. 481,
483 (1908) (common-law tort of injuring plaintiff's reputation and
sale of certain products). Under this line of reasoning, a state
official who committed a common-law tort was said to have
273
been "stripped" of his official or representative character. See
Young, supra, at 159-160;
Poindexter, supra, at
288.
With the growth of statutory and complex regulatory schemes,
this mode of analysis might have been somewhat obscured. Part of
the significance of
Young, in this respect, lies in its
treatment of a threatened suit by an official to enforce an
unconstitutional state law as if it were a commonlaw tort. See 209
U. S., at 158 (treating this possibility as a "specific wrong or
trespass"); id., at 167 ("The difference between an actual and
direct interference with tangible property and the enjoining of
state officers from enforcing an unconstitutional act, is not of a
radical nature"). Treatment of a threatened suit to enforce an
unconstitutional statute as a tort found support in
Reagan
v.
Farmers' Loan &
Trust Co., 154 U. S. 362 (1894), and
Smyth v.
Ames, 169 U. S. 466 (1898). See
Currie, Sovereign Immunity and Suits Against Government Officers,
1984 S. Ct. Rev. 149, 154, and n. 35. By employing the common-law
injury framework, the
Young Court underscored the inadequacy
of state procedures for vindicating the constitutional rights at
stake. 209 U. S., at 163-166. The enforcement scheme in
Young, which raised obstacles to the vindication of
constitutional claims, was not unusual. See,
e. g., Willcox
v.
Consolidated Gas Co., 212 U. S. 19, 53-54 (1909)
(discussing the "enormous and overwhelming" penalties for violating
the challenged statutes);
Western Union Telegraph Co. v.
Andrews, 216
U. S. 165 (1910) (penalties for each violation of the
challenged statute included $1,000 fine);
Herndon v.
Chicago, R. 1. &
P. R. Co., 218 U. S. 135, 151 (1910)
(penalties for violating the challenged statute could "in a short
time ... amount to many thousands of dollars");
Oklahoma
Operating Co. v.
Love, 252 U. S. 331, 336 (1920)
(penalties for violations are "such as might well deter even the
boldest and most confident"). In many situations, as in the
above-cited cases, the exercise of a federal court's equitable
jurisdiction was necessary to avoid "excessive and oppressive
penalties, [the] possibility of [a]
274
multiplicity of suits causing irreparable damage, or [the] lack
of proper opportunities for [state] review." Warren, Federal and
State Court Interference, 43 Harv. L. Rev. 345, 377-378 (1930).
The reluctance to place much reliance on the availability of a
state forum can be understood in part by the prevalence of the idea
that if a State consented to suit in a state forum it had
consented, by that same act, to suit in a federal forum. See,
e.
g., Davis v.
Gray, 16 Wall. 203, 221 (1873);
Reagan v.
Farmers' Loan &
Trust Co.,
supra, at 391. Today, by contrast, it is acknowledged that
States have real and vital interests in preferring their own forums
in suits brought against them, interests that ought not to be
disregarded based upon a waiver presumed in law and contrary to
fact. See,
e. g., Edelman v.
Jordan, 415 U. S., at
673. In this case, there is neither warrant nor necessity to adopt
the
Young device to provide an adequate judicial forum for
resolving the dispute between the Tribe and the State. Idaho's
courts are open to hear the case, and the State neither has nor
claims immunity from their process or their binding judgment.
C
Even if there is a prompt and effective remedy in a state forum,
a second instance in which
Young may serve an important
interest is when the case calls for the interpretation of federal
law. This reasoning, which is described as the interest in having
federal rights vindicated in federal courts, can lead to expansive
application of the
Young exception. See,
e. g., Green
v.
Mansour, 474
U. S. 64, 68 (1985) (explaining that
Young furthers the
federal interest in vindicating federal law);
Pennhurst, 465
U. S., at 105 ("[T]he
Young doctrine has been accepted as
necessary to permit the federal courts to vindicate federal rights"
(citation omitted)). It is difficult to say States consented to
these types of suits in the plan of the Convention. Neither in
theory nor in practice has it been shown problematic to have
federal claims re-
275
solved in state courts where Eleventh Amendment immunity would
be applicable in federal court but for an exception based on
Young. For purposes of the Supremacy Clause, it is simply
irrelevant whether the claim is brought in state or federal court.
Federal courts, after all, did not have general federal-question
jurisdiction until 1875. Assuming the availability of a state forum
with the authority and procedures adequate for the effective
vindication of federal law, due process concerns would not be
implicated by having state tribunals resolve federal-question
cases.
In some cases, it is true, the federal courts play an
indispensable role in maintaining the structural integrity of the
constitutional design. A federal forum assures the peaceful
resolution of disputes between the States,
South Dakota v.
North Carolina, 192 U. S. 286 (1904), and
suits initiated by the United States against States,
United
States v.
Texas, 143 U. S. 621 (1892). While we can
assume there is a special role for Article III courts in the
interpretation and application of federal law in other instances as
well, we do not for that reason conclude that state courts are a
less than adequate forum for resolving federal questions. A
doctrine based on the inherent inadequacy of state forums would run
counter to basic principles of federalism. In
Stone v.
Powell, 428 U. S. 465 (1976), we expressed our "emphatic
reaffirmation ... of the constitutional obligation of the state
courts to uphold federal law, and [our] expression of confidence in
their ability to do so."
Allen v.
McCurry, 449 U. S. 90, 105
(1980).
Interpretation of federal law is the proprietary concern of
state, as well as federal, courts. It is the right and duty of the
States, within their own judiciaries, to interpret and to follow
the Constitution and all laws enacted pursuant to it, subject to a
litigant's right of review in this Court in a proper case. The
Constitution and laws of the United States are not a body of law
external to the States, acknowledged and enforced simply as a
matter of comity. The Constitution is
276
the basic law of the Nation, a law to which a State's ties are
no less intimate than those of the National Government itself. The
separate States and the Government of the United States are bound
in the common cause of preserving the whole constitutional order.
Federal and state law "together form one system of jurisprudence."
Claflin v.
Houseman, 93 U. S. 130, 137 (1876).
It would be error coupled with irony were we to bypass the Eleventh
Amendment, which enacts a scheme solicitous of the States, on the
sole rationale that state courts are inadequate to enforce and
interpret federal rights in every case.
It is a principal concern of the court system in any State to
define and maintain a proper balance between the State's courts on
one hand, and its officials and administrative agencies on the
other. This is of vital concern to States. As the Idaho State
Attorney General has explained: "Everywhere a citizen turns-to
apply for a life-sustaining public benefit, to obtain a license, to
respond to a complaint-it is [administrative law] that governs the
way in which their contact with state government will be carried
out." EchoHawk, Introduction to Administrative Procedure Act Issue,
30 Idaho L. Rev. 261 (1994). In the States there is an ongoing
process by which state courts and state agencies work to elaborate
an administrative law designed to reflect the State's own rules and
traditions concerning the respective scope of judicial review and
administrative discretion. An important case such as the instant
one has features which instruct and enrich the elaboration of
administrative law that is one of the primary responsibilities of
the state judiciary. Where, as here, the parties invoke federal
principles to challenge state administrative action, the courts of
the State have a strong interest in integrating those sources of
law within their own system for the proper judicial control of
state officials.
Our precedents do teach us, nevertheless, that where prospective
relief is sought against individual state officers in a
277
federal forum based on a federal right, the Eleventh Amendment,
in most cases, is not a bar. See,
e. g., Willcox, 212 U. S.,
at 40. Indeed, since
Edelman we have consistently allowed
suits seeking prospective injunctive relief based on federal
violations to proceed. Last Term, however, we did not allow a suit
raising a federal question to proceed based on Congress' provision
of an alternative review mechanism. Whether the presumption in
favor of federal-court jurisdiction in this type of case is
controlling will depend upon the particular context. What is really
at stake where a state forum is available is the desire of the
litigant to choose a particular forum versus the desire of the
State to have the dispute resolved in its own courts. The Eleventh
Amendment's background principles of federalism and comity need not
be ignored in resolving these conflicting preferences. The
Young exception may not be applicable if the suit would
"upset the balance of federal and state interests that it
embodies."
Papasan v.
Allain, 478 U. S. 265, 277
(1986). The exception has been "tailored to conform as precisely as
possible to those specific situations in which it is necessary to
permit the federal courts to vindicate federal rights."
Ibid. (citation and internal quotation marks omitted); see
also
Pennhurst, 465 U. S., at 104, n. 13.
The course of our case law indicates the wisdom and necessity of
considering, when determining the applicability of the Eleventh
Amendment, the real affront to a State of allowing a suit to
proceed. As we explained in
Ford Motor Co. v.
Department
of Treasury of Ind., 323 U. S. 459 (1945):
"[T]he nature of a suit as one against the state is to be
determined by the essential nature and effect of the proceeding."
Id., at 464. We held that "when the action is in essence one
for the recovery of money from the state, the state is the real,
substantial party in interest and is entitled to invoke its
sovereign immunity from suit even though individual officials are
nominal defendants."
Ibid. In re Ayers, cited with approval
in
Young, stated that it is not "conclu-
278
sive of the principal question in this case, that the [State] is
not named as a party defendant. Whether it is the actual party, in
the sense of the prohibition of the Constitution, must be
determined by a consideration of the nature of the case as
presented on the whole record." 123 U. S., at 492. See also Ex
parte New York,
256
U. S. 490, 500 (1921) (Young's applicability "is to be
determined not by the mere names of the titular parties but by the
essential nature and effect of the proceeding, as it appears from
the entire record"). Of course, the State's interests are almost
always implicated to a certain extent in Young actions, but the
statements we cite reflect the Court's recognition "that the need
to promote the supremacy of federal law must be accommodated to the
constitutional immunity of the States." Pennhurst, supra, at
105.
D
Our recent cases illustrate a careful balancing and
accommodation of state interests when determining whether the Young
exception applies in a given case. In Edelman v. Jordan,
415 U. S. 651 (1974), the
relief granted by the Federal District Court required state
officials to release and remit federal benefits. While the District
Court's order might have served the goal of deterrence as well as
compensation, we concluded the suit was barred by the Eleventh
Amendment because it was not necessary for the vindication of
federal rights. In reaching this conclusion, we explained that "we
must judge the award actually made in this case, and not one which
might have been differently tailored in a different case."
Id., at 665. There was no need for the Edelman Court to
consider the other relief granted by the District Court,
prospectively enjoining state officials from failing to abide by
federal requirements, since it was conceded that Young was
sufficient for this purpose. 415 U. S., at 664. The second time the
Edelman litigation came before the Court, in Quern v. Jordan,
440 U. S. 332
(1979), we made
279
a point of saying the relief sought pursuant to the
Young
action was a notice "simply inform[ing] class members that their
federal suit is at an end, that the federal court can provide them
with no further relief, and that there are existing state
administrative procedures .... Petitioner raises no objection to
the expense of preparing or sending it. The class members are given
no more ... than what they would have gathered by sitting in the
courtroom." 440 U. S., at 349 (citation and internal quotation
marks omitted).
Milliken v.
Bradley, 433 U. S. 267 (1977), is
consistent with this approach. Although authorizing relief having
an undeniably substantial effect on the State,
Milliken does
not obviate the need for careful consideration of a suit's impact.
Milliken concerned a
Young suit against various
Michigan officials resulting in a District Court order requiring
the State, along with the Detroit School Board, to pay for a
comprehensive education program for schoolchildren who had been
subjected to past acts of
de jure segregation. The gravamen
of the complaint and its ultimate purpose was to vindicate the
plaintiffs' civil liberties, not to establish ownership over state
resources or funds. The
Milliken lawsuit and the resulting
order were a direct result of the State's "official acts of racial
discrimination committed by both the Detroit School Board and the
State of Michigan" in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. 433 U.
S., at 269. If Congress pursuant to its § 5 remedial powers under
the Fourteenth Amendment may abrogate sovereign immunity, even if
the resulting legislation goes beyond what is constitutionally
necessary, see,
e. g., Fitzpatrick v.
Bitzer,
427 U. S. 445
(1976) (concluding that Title VII's authorization of federal-court
jurisdiction to award money damages against a state government to
individuals subjected to employment discrimination does not violate
the Eleventh Amendment since Congress was exercising its § 5
remedial powers), it follows that the substantive provisions of the
Fourteenth Amendment themselves offer a powerful reason to provide
a federal forum.
280
The
Milliken Court, for similar reasons, rejected a Tenth
Amendment challenge to the order. 433 U. S., at 291. In short,
"[t]he theme that thus emerges from [our recent
Young cases]
... is one of balancing of state and federal interests."
Pennsylvania v.
Union Gas Co., 491 U. S., at 27
(STEVENS, J., concurring).
This case-by-case approach to the
Young doctrine has been
evident from the start. Before
Larson v.
Domestic and
Foreign Commerce Corp., 337 U. S. 682 (1949) (a
federal sovereign immunity case), we allowed suits to proceed, as
explained above, if the official committed a tort as defined by the
common law. While
Larson rejected this reliance on the
common law of torts, see id., at 692-695, the importance of
case-by-case analysis was recognized again in
Seminole
Tribe. There, in holding the
Young exception
inapplicable to a suit based on federal law, we relied on
Schweiker v.
Chilicky, 487 U. S. 412 (1988).
Chilicky, in turn, addressed whether a
Bivens type of
action, a right of action stemming from the Constitution itself,
see
Bivens v.
Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents,
403 U. S. 388
(1971), applied in a suit alleging due process violations in the
denial of Social Security disability benefits. A
Bivens
action was unavailable, the
Chilicky Court held, given the
particular circumstances present in the case.
Seminole
Tribe's implicit analogy of
Young to
Bivens is
instructive. Both the
Young and
Bivens lines of cases
reflect a sensitivity to varying contexts, and courts should
consider whether there are "special factors counselling
hesitation," 403 U. S., at 396, before allowing a suit to proceed
under either theory. The range of concerns to be considered in
answering this inquiry is broad. See id., at 407 (Harlan, J.,
concurring).
As no one disputes, the
Young fiction is an exercise in
line-drawing. There is no reason why the line cannot be drawn to
reflect the real interests of States consistent with the clarity
and certainty appropriate to the Eleventh Amendment's
jurisdictional inquiry.
281
III
We now turn to consider whether the Tribe may avoid the Eleventh
Amendment bar and avail itself of the
Young exception.
Although the "difference between the type of relief barred by the
Eleventh Amendment and that permitted under
Ex parte Young
will not in many instances be that between day and night,"
Edelman, 415 U. S., at 667, this suit, we decide, falls on
the Eleventh Amendment side of the line, and Idaho's sovereign
immunity controls.
The Tribe has alleged an ongoing violation of its property
rights in contravention of federal law and seeks prospective
injunctive relief. The Tribe argues that it should therefore be
able to avail itself of the
Ex parte Young fiction.
Moreover, the Tribe points to the plurality decision in
Florida
Dept. of State v.
Treasure Salvors, Inc., 458 U. S. 670 (1982)
(opinion of STEVENS, J.), where we allowed a Federal District Court
to issue a warrant commanding state officials to turn over various
artifacts (mainly treasure from a sunken Spanish galleon) to the
United States Marshal despite the State's claim of sovereign
immunity.
An allegation of an ongoing violation of federal law where the
requested relief is prospective is ordinarily sufficient to invoke
the
Young fiction. However, this case is unusual in that the
Tribe's suit is the functional equivalent of a quiet title action
which implicates special sovereignty interests. We do not think
Treasure Salvors, supra, is helpful to the Tribe because the
state officials there were acting beyond the authority conferred
upon them by the State, id., at 696697, a theory the Tribe does not
even attempt to pursue in the case before us. We must examine the
effect of the Tribe's suit and its impact on these special
sovereignty interests in order to decide whether the
Ex parte
Young fiction is applicable.
It is common ground between the parties, at this stage of the
litigation, that the Tribe could not maintain a quiet title suit
against Idaho in federal court, absent the State's con-
282
sent. The Eleventh Amendment would bar it. Tindal, 167 U. S., at
223. Despite this prohibition, the declaratory and injunctive
relief the Tribe seeks is close to the functional equivalent of
quiet title in that substantially all benefits of ownership and
control would shift from the State to the Tribe. This is especially
troubling when coupled with the far-reaching and invasive relief
the Tribe seeks, relief with consequences going well beyond the
typical stakes in a real property quiet title action. The suit
seeks, in effect, a determination that the lands in question are
not even within the regulatory jurisdiction of the State. The
requested injunctive relief would bar the State's principal
officers from exercising their governmental powers and authority
over the disputed lands and waters. The suit would diminish, even
extinguish, the State's control over a vast reach of lands and
waters long deemed by the State to be an integral part of its
territory. To pass this off as a judgment causing little or no
offense to Idaho's sovereign authority and its standing in the
Union would be to ignore the realities of the relief the Tribe
demands.
Any contention that the State is not implicated by the suit in a
manner having an immediate effect on jurisdictional control over
important public lands is belied by the complaint itself. The state
officials who are the named defendants, all members of the Board of
Land Commissioners save Director Higginson, include: Governor Cecil
Andrus, who is Chairman of the Board and trustee of a public water
right in Lake Coeur d'Alene pursuant to Idaho Code § 67-4304
(1989); Pete Cenarrusa, Secretary of State; Larry Echo Hawk,
Attorney General; Jerry Evans, Superintendent of Public
Instruction; J. D. Williams, Auditor; and Keith Higginson, Director
of the Department of Water Resources. The power to regulate and
control the use and disposition of public lands, including the beds
of navigable lakes, rivers, and streams, is vested in the Board of
Land Commissioners. Idaho Const., Art. IX,
283
§ 7 (Supp. 1996); Idaho Code §§ 58-101, 58-104(9) (1994 and
Supp. 1996).
Not only would the relief block all attempts by these officials
to exercise jurisdiction over a substantial portion of land but
also would divest the State of its sovereign control over submerged
lands, lands with a unique status in the law and infused with a
public trust the State itself is bound to respect. As we stressed
in
Utah Div. of State Lands v.
United States,
482 U. S. 193,
195-198 (1987), lands underlying navigable waters have historically
been considered "sovereign lands." State ownership of them has been
"considered an essential attribute of sovereignty."
Id., at
195. The Court from an early date has acknowledged that the people
of each of the Thirteen Colonies at the time of independence
"became themselves sovereign; and in that character hold the
absolute right to all their navigable waters and the soils under
them for their own common use, subject only to the rights since
surrendered by the Constitution to the general government."
Martin v.
Lessee of Waddell, 16 Pet. 367, 410 (1842).
Then, in
Lessee of Pollard v.
Hagan, 3 How. 212
(1845), the Court concluded that States entering the Union after
1789 did so on an "equal footing" with the original States and so
have similar ownership over these "sovereign lands."
Id., at
228-229. In consequence of this rule, a State's title to these
sovereign lands arises from the equal footing doctrine and is
"conferred not by Congress but by the Constitution itself."
Oregon ex rel. State Land Bd. v.
Corvallis Sand &
Gravel Co., 429 U. S. 363, 374
(1977). The importance of these lands to state sovereignty explains
our longstanding commitment to the principle that the United States
is presumed to have held navigable waters in acquired territory for
the ultimate benefit of future States and "that disposals by the
United States during the territorial period are not lightly to be
inferred, and should not be regarded as intended unless the
intention was definitely declared or
284
otherwise made very plain."
United States v.
Holt
State Bank, 270 U.
S. 49, 55 (1926).
The principle which underlies the equal footing doctrine and the
strong presumption of state ownership is that navigable waters
uniquely implicate sovereign interests. The principle arises from
ancient doctrines. See,
e. g., Institutes of Justinian, Lib.
II, Tit. I, § 2 (T. Cooper transl. 2d ed. 1841) ("Rivers and ports
are public; hence the right of fishing in a port, or in rivers are
in common"). The special treatment of navigable waters in English
law was recognized in Bracton's time. He stated that "[a]ll rivers
and ports are public, so that the right to fish therein is common
to all persons. The use of river banks, as of the river itself, is
also public." 2 H. Bracton, De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae
40 (S. Thorne transl. 1968). The Magna Carta provided that the
Crown would remove "all fish-weirs ... from the Thames and the
Medway and throughout all England, except on the sea coast." M.
Evans & R. Jack, Sources of English Legal and Constitutional
History 53 (1984); see also
Waddell, supra, at 410-413
(tracing tidelands trusteeship back to Magna Carta).
The Court in
Shively v.
Bowlby, 152 U. S. 1, 13 (1894),
sum-
marizing English common law, stated:
"In England, from the time of Lord Hale, it has been treated as
settled that the title in the soil of the sea, or of arms of the
sea, below ordinary high water mark, is in the King; except so far
as an individual or a corporation has acquired rights in it by
express grant, or by prescription or usage ... and that this title,
jus privatum, whether in the King or in a subject, is held
subject to the public right, jus publicum, of navigation and
fishing."
Not surprisingly, American law adopted as its own much of the
English law respecting navigable waters, including the principle
that submerged lands are held for a public purpose.
285
See
Arnold v.
Mundy, 6 N. J. L. 1 (1821). A
prominent example is
Illinois Central R. Co. v.
III
inois, 146 U. S.
387 (1892), where the Court held that the Illinois Legislature
did not have the authority to vest the State's right and title to a
portion of the navigable waters of Lake Michigan in a private party
even though a proviso in the grant declared that it did not
authorize obstructions to the harbor, impairment of the public
right of navigation, or exemption of the private party from any act
regulating rates of wharfage and dockage to be charged in the
harbor. An attempted transfer was beyond the authority of the
legislature since it amounted to abdication of its obligation to
regulate, improve, and secure submerged lands for the benefit of
every individual.
Id., at 455-460. While
Illinois
Central was "necessarily a statement of Illinois law,"
Appleby v.
City of New York, 271 U. S. 364, 395
(1926), it invoked the principle in American law recognizing the
weighty public interests in submerged lands.
American law, in some ways, enhanced and extended the public
aspects of submerged lands. English law made a distinction between
waterways subject to the ebb and flow of the tide and large enough
to accommodate boats (royal rivers) and nontidal waterways (public
highways). With respect to the royal rivers, the King was presumed
to hold title to the riverbed and soil while the public retained
the right of passage and the right to fish. With public highways,
as the name suggests, the public retained the right of passage, but
title was typically held by a private party. See J. Angell, A
Treatise on The Common Law in relation to Water-Courses 14-18
(1824). The riparian proprietor was presumed to hold title to the
stream to the center thread of the waters
(usque ad filum
aquae), which accorded him the exclusive right of fishery in
the stream and entitled him to compensation for any impairment of
his right to the enjoyment of his property caused by construction.
The State's obligation to pay compensation could result in
substantial liability.
Shrunk v.
Schuylkill, 14 Sergo
& Rawle 71,80 (Pa.
286
1826). State courts, however, early on in Pennsylvania, South
Carolina, Alabama, and North Carolina rejected the distinction and
concluded the State presumptively held title regardless of whether
the waterway was subject to the ebb and flow of the tide. See,
e. g., Carson v.
Blazer, 2 Binn. 475 (Pa. 1810);
Cates v.
Wadlington, 1 McCord 580 (S. C. 1822);
Bullock v.
Wilson, 2 Port. 436 (Ala. 1835);
Collins v.
Benbury, 3 Iredell 277 (N. C. 1842); but
see
Hooker v.
Cummings, 20 Johns. 90 (N. Y. 1822).
And this Court in describing the concept of sovereign lands
rejected the requirement that navigable waters need be affected by
the tides.
Barney v.
Keokuk, 94 U. S. 324, 337-338
(1877); cf.
Propeller Genesee Chief v.
Fitzhugh, 12
How. 443 (1852).
American law, moreover, did not recognize the sovereign's rights
of private property
(jus privatum) that existed in England,
apart from the public's rights to this land
(jus publicum).
In England, for instance, the Crown had the exclusive right to hunt
the "grand fishes,"
e. g., whales and sturgeons, of the sea.
J. Angell, A Treatise on the Right of Property in Tide Waters and
in the Soil and Shores Thereof 18-19 (1847). There was a particular
aversion to recognizing in States the Crown's
jus privatum
right to seize private structures on shores and marshes reclaimed
from tidewaters. See J. Gould, A Treatise on the Law of Waters
including Riparian Rights, and Public And Private Rights In Waters
Tidal And Inland § 32 (2d ed. 1891). All these developments in
American law are a natural outgrowth of the perceived public
character of submerged lands, a perception which underlies and
informs the principle that these lands are tied in a unique way to
sovereignty.
Idaho views its interest in the submerged lands in similar
terms. Idaho law provides: "Water being essential to the industrial
prosperity of the state, and all agricultural development ... its
control shall be in the state, which, in providing for its use,
shall equally guard all the various interests involved. All the
waters of the state, when flowing in their
287
natural channels ... are declared to be the property of the
state." Idaho Code §42-101 (1990). Title to these public waters is
held by the State of Idaho in its sovereign capacity for the
purpose of ensuring that it is used for the public benefit.
Poole v.
Olaveson, 82 Idaho 496, 503, 356 P. 2d 61,
65 (1960). There are specific statutory provisions concerning Lake
Coeur d' Alene. The Lake is held in trust by the Governor for the
people of the State of Idaho. The "preservation of [Lake Coeur
d'Alene] for scenic beauty, health, recreation, transportation and
commercial purposes [being] necessary and desirable for all the
inhabitants of the state is hereby declared to be a beneficial use
of such water." Idaho Code § 67-4304 (1989). The "lands belonging
to the state of Idaho between the ordinary high and low water mark
at [Lake Coeur d'Alene] ... are hereby declared to be devoted to a
public use in connection with the preservation of said lak[e] in
[its] present condition as a health resort and recreation place for
the inhabitants of the state." Idaho Code § 67-4305 (Supp.
1996).
Our recitation of the ties between the submerged lands and the
State's own sovereignty, and of the severance and diminishment of
state sovereignty were the declaratory and injunctive relief to be
granted, is not in derogation of the Tribe's own claim. As the
Tribe views the case, the lands are just as necessary, perhaps even
more so, to its own dignity and ancient right. The question before
us is not the merit of either party's claim, however, but the
relation between the sovereign lands at issue and the immunity the
State asserts.
It is apparent, then, that if the Tribe were to prevail, Idaho's
sovereign interest in its lands and waters would be affected in a
degree fully as intrusive as almost any conceivable retroactive
levy upon funds in its Treasury. Under these particular and special
circumstances, we find the Young exception inapplicable. The
dignity and status of its statehood allow Idaho to rely on its
Eleventh Amendment
288
immunity and to insist upon responding to these claims in its
own courts, which are open to hear and determine the case.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed in part, and
the case is remanded for proceedings consistent with this
opinion.
It is so ordered.
JUSTICE O'CONNOR, with whom JUSTICE SCALIA and JUSTICE THOMAS
join, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
The Coeur d'Alene Tribe of Idaho seeks declaratory and
injunctive relief precluding Idaho officials from regulating or
interfering with its possession of submerged lands beneath Lake
Coeur d'Alene. Invoking the doctrine of
Ex parte Young,
209 U. S. 123
(1908), the Tribe argues that the Eleventh Amendment does not bar
it from pursuing its claims against state officials in federal
court. I agree with the Court that the Tribe's claim cannot go
forward in federal court.
In
Young, the Court held that a federal court has
jurisdiction over a suit against a state officer to enjoin official
actions that violate federal law, even if the State itself is
immune from suit under the Eleventh Amendment. The
Young
doctrine recognizes that if a state official violates federal law,
he is stripped of his official or representative character and may
be personally liable for his conduct; the State cannot cloak the
officer in its sovereign immunity.
Id., at 159-160. Where a
plaintiff seeks prospective relief to end a state officer's ongoing
violation of federal law, such a claim can ordinarily proceed in
federal court.
Milliken v.
Bradley, 433 U. S. 267, 289-290
(1977). The doctrine is not, however, without limitations. A
federal court cannot award retrospective relief, designed to remedy
past violations of federallaw. See
Edelman v.
Jordan,
415 U. S. 651,
668 (1974);
Green v.
Mansour, 474 U. S. 64, 68-69
(1985).
289
This case is unlike a typical
Young action in two
important respects. First, as the Tribe concedes, the suit is the
functional equivalent of an action to quiet its title to the bed of
Lake Coeur d'Alene. It asks a federal court to declare that the
lands are for the exclusive use, occupancy, and enjoyment of the
Tribe and to invalidate all statutes and ordinances purporting to
regulate the lands. The Tribe could not maintain a quiet title
action in federal court without the State's consent, and for good
reason: A federal court cannot summon a State before it in a
private action seeking to divest the State of a property interest.
Florida Dept. of State v.
Treasure Salvors, Inc.,
458 U. S. 670,
699-700 (1982) (plurality opinion); see
Ford Motor Co. v.
Department of Treasury of Ind., 323 U. S. 459, 464
(1945). Second, the Tribe does not merely seek to possess land that
would otherwise remain subject to state regulation, or to bring the
State's regulatory scheme into compliance with federal law. Rather,
the Tribe seeks to eliminate altogether the State's regulatory
power over the submerged lands at issue-to establish not only that
the State has no right to possess the property, but also that the
property is not within Idaho's sovereign jurisdiction at all. We
have repeatedly emphasized the importance of submerged lands to
state sovereignty. Control of such lands is critical to a State's
ability to regulate use of its navigable waters.
Utah Div. of
State Lands v.
United States, 482 U. S. 193, 195
(1987).
The Tribe's claim to federal jurisdiction rests heavily on cases
that, in my view, do not control here. The first is
Treasure
Salvors, in which a plurality concluded that a federal court
could issue a warrant commanding Florida officials to release
certain artifacts because the suit was not, in effect, a suit
against the State. But the fact that the suit was permitted to
proceed in
Treasure Salvors does not advance our inquiry.
The plurality's conclusion that the suit was not against the State
was based on its view that state officials lacked any colorable
basis under
state law for claiming right-
290
ful possession of the artifacts. 458 U. S., at 692-697. Put
another way, the plurality in
Treasure Salvors would have
permitted the suit to proceed not because the plaintiff's claim of
title arguably rested on federal law, see
post, at 311
(SOUTER, J., dissenting), but because state officials were acting
beyond the authority conferred on them by the State, quite apart
from whether their conduct also violated federal law. Because the
Tribe does not pursue such a theory,
Treasure Salvors
provides little guidance here. In addition, whether or not the
Court's ultimate holding in
Treasure Salvors that the suit
should proceed remains sound on the theory that the plaintiff
identified a federal law basis for its claim of title, see
post, at 307, n. 9 (SOUTER, J., dissenting), the only
reasoning
explicitly offered by the
Treasure Salvors
plurality was narrowed by our subsequent decision in
Pennhurst
State School and Hospital v.
Halderman, 465 U. S. 89,
106 (1984) (plaintiff cannot invoke
Young doctrine based
solely on alleged violation of state law); see 465 U. S., at 114,
n. 25.
Second, the Tribe invokes a series of cases in which plaintiffs
successfully pursued in federal court claims that federal and state
officials wrongfully possessed certain real property. See,
e.
g., United States v.
Lee, 106 U. S. 196 (1882);
Tindal v.
Wesley, 167 U. S. 204 (1897). In
both
Lee and
Tindal, the Court made clear that the
suits could proceed against the officials because no judgment would
bind the State. It was possible, the Court found, to distinguish
between
possession of the property and
title to the
property. See
Lee, supra, at 222;
Tindal, supra, at
223-224. A court could find that the officials had no right to
remain in possession, thus conveying all the incidents of ownership
to the plaintiff, while not formally divesting the State of its
title. As noted, however, this case does not concern ownership and
possession of an ordinary parcel of real property. When state
officials are found to have no right to possess a disputed parcel
of land, the State nevertheless retains its authority to
291
regulate uses of the land. Here, the Tribe seeks a declaration
not only that the State does not own the bed of Lake Coeur d'Alene,
but also that the lands are not within the State's sovereign
jurisdiction. Whatever distinction can be drawn between possession
and ownership of real property in other contexts, it is not
possible to make such a distinction for submerged lands. For this
reason,
Lee, Tindal, and analogous cases do not control
here. In my view, because a ruling in the Tribe's favor, in
practical effect, would be indistinguishable from an order granting
the Tribe title to submerged lands, the Young exception to the
Eleventh Amendment's bar is not properly invoked here.
While I therefore agree that the Tribe's suit must be dismissed,
I believe that the principal opinion is flawed in several respects.
In concluding that the Tribe's suit cannot proceed, the principal
opinion reasons that federal courts determining whether to exercise
jurisdiction over any suit against a state officer must engage in a
case-specific analysis of a number of concerns, including whether a
state forum is available to hear the dispute, what particular
federal right the suit implicates, and whether "special factors
counse[l] hesitation" in the exercise of jurisdiction.
Ante,
at 274, 275, 278-280 (internal quotation marks omitted). This
approach unnecessarily recharacterizes and narrows much of our
Young jurisprudence. The parties have not briefed whether such a
shift in the Young doctrine is warranted. In my view, it is
not.
The principal opinion begins by examining this Court's early
Young cases and concludes that the Court found the exercise of
federal jurisdiction proper in those cases principally because no
state forum was available to vindicate a plaintiff's claim that
state officers were violating federal law.
Ante, at 270-274.
But the principal opinion cites not a single case in which the
Court expressly relied on the absence of an available state forum
as a rationale for applying Young. Instead, the principal opinion
invokes language in
292
the Court's opinions suggesting that the plaintiff could not
secure an adequate remedy
at law in a state forum. See
Young, 209 U. S., at 163;
Osborn v.
Bank of United
States, 9 Wheat. 738, 838-846 (1824);
Lee, supra, at
213, 219. But the inadequacy of a legal remedy is a prerequisite
for equitable relief in any case. That we pronounced state legal
remedies inadequate before permitting the suit to proceed is
unsurprising, and it is not a sufficient basis for the principal
opinion's broad conclusion.
Not only do our early
Young cases fail to rely on the
absence of a state forum as a basis for jurisdiction, but we also
permitted federal actions to proceed even though a state forum
was open to hear the plaintiff's claims. In fact,
Young itself relied on two such cases,
Reagan v.
Farmers' Loan &
Trust Co., 154 U. S. 362 (1894), and
Smyth v.
Ames, 169 U. S. 466 (1898). See
209 U. S., at 153-155. Both
Reagan and
Smyth, like
Young, involved challenges to state enforcement of railroad
rates. In each case, the Court permitted the federal suit to
proceed in part because state statutes authorized state court
challenges to those rates. As
Young made clear, however, the
fact that the States had waived immunity in their own courts was
not the sole basis for permitting the federal suit to proceed.
Discussing
Reagan, the
Young Court stated: "This
court held that [language authorizing a suit in state court]
permitted a suit in [federal court], but it also held that,
irrespective of that consent, the suit was not in effect a suit
against the State (although the Attorney General was enjoined),
and therefore not prohibited under the [Eleventh] [A]mendment ....
Each of these grounds is effective and both are of equal
force." 209 U. S., at 153 (emphasis added). Similarly, the
Young Court emphasized that the decision in
Smyth was
not based solely on the state statute authorizing suit in state
court; rather, it was based on the conclusion that the suit "was
not a suit against a State." 209 U. S., at 154.
293
In any event, as the principal opinion ultimately concedes, in
more recent cases
Young has been applied "[e]ven if there is
a prompt and effective remedy in a state forum."
Ante, at
274. When a plaintiff seeks prospective relief to end an ongoing
violation of federal rights, ordinarily the Eleventh Amendment
poses no bar.
Milliken, 433 U. S., at 289-290. Yet the
principal opinion unnecessarily questions this basic principle of
federal law, finding it "difficult to say States consented to these
types of suits in the plan of the Convention . . . . For purposes
of the Supremacy Clause, it is simply irrelevant whether the claim
is brought in state or federal court."
Ante, at 274-275. We
have frequently acknowledged the importance of having federal
courts open to enforce and interpret federal rights. See
Green v.
Mansour, 474 U. S., at 68 ("[T]he
availability of prospective relief of the sort awarded in
Ex
parte Young gives life to the Supremacy Clause. Remedies
designed to end a continuing violation of federal law are necessary
to vindicate the federal interest in assuring the supremacy of that
law");
Pennhurst, 465 U. S., at 105 ("[T]he
Young
doctrine has been accepted as necessary to permit the federal
courts to vindicate federal rights and hold state officials
responsible to the supreme authority of the United States .... Our
decisions repeatedly have emphasized that the
Young doctrine
rests on the need to promote the vindication of federal rights"
(citations and internal quotation marks omitted)). There is no need
to call into question the importance of having federal courts
interpret federal rights-particularly as a means of serving a
federal interest in uniformity-to decide this case. Nor does
acknowledging the interpretive function of federal courts suggest
that state courts are inadequate to apply federal law.
In casting doubt upon the importance of having federal courts
interpret federal law, the principal opinion lays the groundwork
for its central conclusion: that a case-by-case balancing approach
is appropriate where a plaintiff invokes the
Young exception
to the Eleventh Amendment's jurisdic-
294
tional bar, even when a complaint clearly alleges a violation of
federal law and clearly seeks prospective relief. The principal
opinion characterizes our modern
Young cases as fitting this
case-by-case model.
Ante, at 278-280. While it is true that
the Court has decided a series of cases on the scope of the
Young doctrine, these cases do not reflect the principal
opinion's approach. Rather, they establish only that a
Young
suit is available where a plaintiff alleges an
ongoing
violation of
federal law, and where the relief sought is
prospective rather than
retrospective. Compare
Milliken, supra, at 289-290, with
Green, supra, at 68
(Eleventh Amendment bars notice relief where plaintiffs alleged no
ongoing violation of federal law);
Pennhurst, supra, at 106
(Eleventh Amendment bars suit alleging violation of state rather
than federal law);
Edelman, 415 U. S., at 668 (Eleventh
Amendment bars relief for past violation of federal law).
The principal opinion properly notes that the Court found some
of the relief awarded by the lower court in
Edelmanan order
requiring state officials to release and remit federal
benefits-barred by the Eleventh Amendment.
Ante, at 278; see
Edelman, supra, at 668. It then states that the Court did
not consider the propriety of other relief awarded below-an
injunction requiring state officials to abide by federal
requirements-because the State conceded that such relief was proper
under
Young. Ante, at 278. The principal opinion appears to
suggest that the Court could have found such relief improper in the
absence of this concession. But surely the State conceded this
point because the law was well established. Indeed,
Edelman
is consistently cited for the proposition that prospective
injunctive relief is available in a
Young suit. See,
e.
g., Milliken, supra, at 289. Similarly, by focusing on the
Court's statement in
Quern v.
Jordan, 440 U. S. 332, 349
(1979), that the state officials did not object to preparing or
sending notice of class members' possible remedies under state
administrative procedures,
ante, at 278-279, the principal
opinion implies that the Court upheld
295
the prospective relief granted there because the relief was not
particularly invasive. But the question in
Quern was whether
the notice relief was more like the prospective relief allowed in
typical
Young suits, or more like the retrospective relief
disallowed in
Edelman. 440 U. S., at 347. The
Quern
Court permitted the relief to stand not because it was
inconsequential, but because it was adjudged prospective. Finally,
the principal opinion explains this Court's decision in
Milliken-which upheld an order requiring a State to pay for
a comprehensive education for children who had been subjected to
segregation-by focusing on the fact that the federal interests
implicated by the claim in that case were particularly strong.
Ante, at 279-280. Again, however, the Court upheld the
relief not because the complaint sought to vindicate civil
liberties, but because the remedy was prospective rather than
retrospective. 433 U. S., at 289. Our case law simply does not
support the proposition that federal courts must evaluate the
importance of the federal right at stake before permitting an
officer's suit to proceed.
Nor can I agree with the principal opinion's attempt to import
the inquiry employed in
Bivens v.
Six Unknown Fed.
Narcotics Agents, 403 U. S. 388 (1971),
into our
Young jurisprudence.
Ante, at 280. In the
Bivens context, where the issue is whether an implied remedy
for money damages exists in a suit against a federal official for a
constitutional violation, we have declined to recognize such a
remedy where we have identified "special factors counselling
hesitation." 403 U. S., at 396. In likening
Young actions to
Bivens actions, the principal opinion places great weight on
a single citation in the Court's opinion last Term in
Seminole
Tribe of Fla. v.
Florida, 517 U. S. 44 (1996).
There, relying on
Schweiker v.
Chilicky, 487 U. S. 412, 423
(1988), we noted that where Congress has created a remedial scheme
for the enforcement of a federal right, we may not supplement that
scheme in a suit against a federal officer with a judicially
created remedy. We reasoned that the same general princi-
296
pIe should apply in Young cases. That is, where Congress
prescribes a detailed remedial scheme for enforcement of a
statutory right, a court should not lift the Eleventh Amendment bar
to apply its "full remedial powers" in a suit against an officer in
a manner inconsistent with the legislative scheme. 517 U. S., at
75. The single citation to a
Bivens case in
Seminole
Tribe by no means establishes that a caseby-case balancing
approach to the Young doctrine is appropriate or consistent with
our jurisprudence.
In sum, the principal opinion replaces a straightforward inquiry
into whether a complaint alleges an ongoing violation of federal
law and seeks relief properly characterized as prospective with a
vague balancing test that purports to account for a "broad" range
of unspecified factors.
Ante, at 280. In applying that
approach here, the principal opinion relies on characteristics of
this case that do not distinguish it from cases in which the Young
doctrine is properly invoked, such as the fact that the complaint
names numerous public officials and the fact that the State will
have a continuing interest in litigation against its officials.
Ante, at 269-270, 282-283. These factors cannot supply a
basis for deciding this case. Every Young suit names public
officials, and we have never doubted the importance of state
interests in cases falling squarely within our past interpretations
of the Young doctrine.
While I do not subscribe to the principal opinion's
reformulation of the appropriate jurisdictional inquiry for all
cases in which a plaintiff invokes the Young doctrine, I
nevertheless agree that the Court reaches the correct conclusion
here. The Young doctrine rests on the premise that a suit against a
state official to enjoin an ongoing violation of federal law is not
a suit against the State. Where a plaintiff seeks to divest the
State of all regulatory power over submerged lands-in effect, to
invoke a federal court's jurisdiction to quiet title to sovereign
lands-it simply cannot be said that the suit is not a suit against
the State. I would not narrow
297
our
Young doctrine, but I would not extend it to reach
this case. Accordingly, I join Parts I, II-A, and III of the
Court's opinion.
JUSTICE SOUTER, with whom JUSTICE STEVENS, JUSTICE GINSBURG, and
JUSTICE BREYER join, dissenting.
Congress has implemented the Constitution's grant of
federal-question jurisdiction by authorizing federal courts to
enforce rights arising under the Constitution and federal law. The
federal courts have an obligation to exercise that jurisdiction,
and in doing so have applied the doctrine of
Ex parte Young,
209 U. S. 123
(1908), that in the absence of some congressional limitation a
federal court may entertain an individual's suit to enjoin a state
officer from official action that violates federal law. The Coeur
d'Alene Tribe of Idaho claims that officers of the State of Idaho
are acting to regulate land that belongs to the Tribe under federal
law, and the Tribe prays for declaratory and injunctive relief to
halt the regulation as an ongoing violation of that law.1 The
Tribe's suit falls squarely within the
Young doctrine, and
the District Court had an obligation to hear it.
The response of today's Court, however, is to deny that
obligation. The principal opinion would redefine the doctrine, from
a rule recognizing federal jurisdiction to enjoin state officers
from violating federal law to a principle of equitable discretion
as much at odds with
Young's result as with the foundational
doctrine on which
Young rests. JUSTICE O'CONNOR charts a
more limited course that wisely rejects the lead opinion's call for
federal jurisdiction contingent on case-by-case balancing, but sets
forth a rule denying jurisdiction here on Eleventh Amendment
grounds because the
1 The Tribe originally sought to quiet its claim of title as
against the State itself, but the claim was dismissed as barred by
the Eleventh Amendment, see
42 F.3d
1244, 1254 (CA9 1994), and we denied certiorari to review the
dismissal. See 517 U. S. 1133 (1996).
298
Tribe's suit is said to be indistinguishable from one to quiet
title to the submerged lands and could leave the State not only
without possession of the lands but without present opportunity to
regulate them under state law. The Tribe's suit, however, is no
more (or less) against the State than any of the claims brought in
our prior cases applying
Young, and the State's regulatory
authority would be no more imposed upon than the State's authority
in
Young itself.
While there is reason for great satisfaction that JUSTICE
O'CONNOR'S view is the controlling one, it is still true that the
effect of the two opinions is to redefine and reduce the substance
of federal subject-matter jurisdiction to vindicate federal rights.
And it is indeed substance, not form, that is here at stake, for
this case comes on the heels of last Term's fundamentally erroneous
decision in
Seminole Tribe of Fla. v.
Florida,
517 U. S. 44
(1996). Consequently, if an individual or Indian tribe may not
enter a federal court to obtain relief against state officers for
violating federally derived property rights, that private plaintiff
simply may seek no relief in a federal forum.
I respectfully dissent.
I
In
Seminole Tribe, the Court declared
Ex parte
Young inapplicable to the case before it, having inferred that
Congress meant to leave no such avenue of relief open to those
claiming federal rights under the statute then under consideration.
See
Seminole Tribe, supra, at 73-76. The Court left the
basic tenets of
Ex parte Young untouched, however, see
Seminole Tribe, supra, at 71-75, nn. 14, 16, 17, and
Congress remained free to remove any bar to the invocation of
Young, even in a successive suit by petitioners in
Seminole Tribe itself.
When Congress has not so displaced the
Young doctrine, a
federal court has jurisdiction in an individual's action against
state officers so long as two conditions are met. The plaintiff
must allege that the officers are acting in violation of
299
federal law,2 see
Pennhurst State School and Hospital v.
Halderman, 465
U. S. 89, 106 (1984), and must seek prospective relief to
address an ongoing violation, not compensation or other
retrospective relief for violations past. See
Green v.
Mansour, 474 U.
S. 64, 68 (1985);
Quern v.
Jordan, 440 U. S. 332,
346-349 (1979);
Edelman v.
Jordan, 415 U. S. 651, 664-671
(1974). The Tribe's claim satisfies each condition.
A
The sources of federal law invoked by the Tribe go back to
November 8, 1873, when President Grant issued an Executive Order
establishing a reservation in the Idaho Territory for the Coeur
d'Alene Tribe. See 1 C. Kappler, Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties
837 (1904). The Tribe claims that the Executive Order, later
ratified by Congress, see Act of Mar. 3, 1891, ch. 543, § 19, 26
Stat. 1026-1029, gave it the beneficial interest, subject only to
the trusteeship of the United States, in the beds and banks of all
navigable water within the reservation, including the submerged
land under Lake Coeur d'Alene. See Complaint "19, 24.3 In
complaining that regulatory actions by the petitioner state
officers violate the Tribe's right to exclusive use and occupancy
of the submerged lands, the Tribe thus claims that they are acting
in violation of controlling federal legal authority; since such
federal authority happens to be necessary for any valid regulation
of Lake Coeur d'Alene's submerged lands and
2 The principal opinion suggests without citation that "in the
plan of the Convention" the States may not have consented to suits
in federal courts against state officers that rest on the
interpretation of federal law.
Ante, at 274. Because a suit
against a state officer to enjoin an ongoing violation of federal
law is not a suit against a State, the scope of state consent to
suit at the founding has no bearing on the availability of officer
suits under
Young.
3 The Tribe also claims to hold unextinguished aboriginal title
to the lands, a claim not passed on below, but which we have
recognized is based on federal law. See generally
Oneida Indian
Nation of N. Y. v.
County of Oneida, 414 U. S. 661 (1974).
300
navigable waters, the Tribe in effect claims that petitioners
are acting ultra vires as a matter of federal law. Petitioners join
issue on just this point, in alleging that the submerged lands were
not conveyed by the Executive Order or its ratification but instead
passed to Idaho under the equal footing doctrine when Idaho became
a State in 1890. Brief for Petitioners 14. While petitioners, as
members of the state board of land commissioners, claim to be
implementing the law of Idaho in regulating the submerged lands and
waters of Lake Coeur d'Alene as a recreational area and health
resort, see Idaho Code §§ 58-104(9) (Supp. 1996), 67-4304 (1989),
67-4305 (Supp. 1996), they agree with the Tribe that title to the
submerged lands is controlled by federal law. See Brief for
Petitioners 25. The Tribe asked the District Court to enjoin the
state officers from "taking any actions or enforcing any State
statutes, ordinances, regulations, customs or usages which cause
[the Tribe and its members] to be deprived of their rights and
privileges of exclusive use and occupancy to all beds and banks of
all navigable water courses and all waters within the 1873 Coeur
d'Alene Reservation boundaries." Complaint' 35.
This is a perfect example of a suit for relief cognizable under
Ex parte Young. Young described the officials' act on the
basis of which jurisdiction was found in that case "simply [as] an
illegal act upon the part of a state official in attempting by the
use of the name of the State to enforce a legislative enactment
which is void because unconstitutional. ... The State has no power
to impart to him any immunity from responsibility to the supreme
authority of the United States." 209 U. S., at 159-160. Later cases
have made it clear that a state official's act is also ultra vires
for purposes of the
Young doctrine when it violates other
valid federal law. See,
e. g., Larson v.
Domestic and
Foreign Commerce Corp., 337 U. S. 682, 698-699
(1949). Such an illegal act amounting to ultra vires action is, of
course, what the Tribe claims here.
301
This case, to be sure, differs from
Young in two
respects, but neither of them affects the Tribe's jurisdictional
position. First, the Tribe's claim to have federal law on its side
rests upon combined executive and congressional action, not the
National Constitution. If the Tribe is right that the N ational
Government conveyed the submerged lands to the Tribe prior to
Idaho's admission to statehood, the officials' action is just as
devoid of any valid basis as the acts found to be void for
unconstitutionality in
Young. See
Florida Dept. of
State v.
Treasure Salvors, Inc., 458 U. S. 670, 675676,
and n. 5, 695-697 (1982) (opinion of STEVENS, J.) (officer suit may
proceed where state officers are acting in violation of federal
statutory law); see also
Larson, supra, at 698-699.
The second difference from
Young is that this case turns
on federal law governing passage of title to property; but a
government's assumption of title to property is no different from
its assumption of any state authority that it may ultimately turn
out not to have. That a claim involves title is thus irrelevant
under
Young and has never been treated otherwise. Not only
has a title claim never displaced
Young so as to render
state officials immune to suit by a rival claimant, see,
e. g.,
Treasure Salvors, supra, but long before
Young had even
been decided
United States v.
Lee, 106 U. S. 196 (1882),
held federal officers to be subject to a possessory action for land
claimed by the United States on the basis of federal law. Since for
purposes of
Young Idaho and its officials claiming title
under federal law are in the same posture as the United States and
its officers in
Lee, the appropriate analysis is the one
exemplified in that case. See also
Tindal v.
Wesley,
167 U. S. 204, 213 (1897) ("[I]t cannot be doubted that the
question whether a particular suit is one against the State, within
the meaning of the Constitution, must depend upon the same
principles that determine whether a particular suit is one against
the United States").
In
Lee, the Court held there was federal jurisdiction
over an ejectment suit brought by General Lee's son to oust
fed-
302
eral officers from property seized by the United States for
alleged nonpayment of taxes and held under an order of the
Secretary of War. The defending officials claimed the "absolute
immunity from judicial inquiry of every one who
asserts
authority from the executive branch of the government, however
clear it may be made that the executive possessed no such power,"
106 U. S., at 220 (emphasis in original), but they lost. The Court
rejected the proposition that possession of property by federal
officers on behalf of the United States sufficed to immunize the
officers from a possessory action brought by a private citizen.4
Lee's suit is seen today as deciding a claim that the officials
involved were acting wholly without authority as a matter of
constitutional law, since they were barred from dealing with the
property by the Government's failure to pay the just compensation
required by the Fifth Amendment. See
Larson, supra, at
697.
Lee thus illustrates that an issue of property title is
no different from any other legal or constitutional matter that may
have to be resolved in deciding whether the officer of an immune
government is so acting beyond his authority as to be amenable to
suit without necessarily implicating his government. See
Treasure Salvors, supra, at 676, 695-697 (opinion of
STEVENS, J.) (like this case, involving state officials' reliance
on federal law); see also
Tindal, supra, at 222.5 Indeed,
the decisions of this Court have so held or assumed as far back as
the time of Chief Justice Marshall's statement in
United
States v.
Peters, 5 Cranch 115, 139-140 (1809), that "it
certainly can never be alleged, that a mere suggestion of title in
a state to property, in possession of an individual,
4 The title claims in this case turn not on a constitutional
issue but on federal title law; this makes no difference under
Young. See
Larson v.
Domestic and Foreign Commerce
Corp., 337 U. S.
682, 698-699 (1949).
5 Whether
Tindal is, or must be, amenable to analysis as
a federal ultra vires case we need not now decide; its holding that
property title is irrelevant to jurisdictional analysis is not open
to question. See 167 U. S., at 222-223.
303
must arrest the proceedings of the court, and prevent their
looking into the suggestion, and examining the validity of the
title." The contrary rule,
Lee later explained, would
"sanctio[n] a tyranny which has no existence in the monarchies of
Europe, nor in any other government which has a just claim to
well-regulated liberty and the protection of personal rights."
Lee, supra, at 221. Thus did the Chief Justice foresee that
governmental officials are not any the less amenable to suit for
relying on their government's claim to property title, and no
decision before today's would have turned the envious eyes of the
old monarchs toward Idaho.
B
The second condition for applying
Young is that relief be
prospective, not retrospective, a bar to future violations of
federal law, not recompense for past mistakes. See
Edelman,
415 U. S., at 664-666. The present complaint asks for just such
relief by seeking to enjoin the State's sport and recreational
regulation of the water covering the lands. It asks for no damages
for past infringement of the tribal interest asserted and no
accounting for fees previously collected by the State in the course
of its regulatory oversight. While there would, of course, be
significant consequences to the State if the Tribe should prevail
on the merits, that will be true whenever
Young applies. In
Young itself, the State was left unable to enforce statutory
railroad rate regulation or collect penalties from violators, and
the
Young doctrine has been held to apply even when
compliance by the defendant officials will create a charge on the
state treasury. The relief does not cease to be forward looking,
nor is the suit transformed into one against the State itself, so
long as its burden upon the State is merely a "necessary
consequence of [the officers'] compliance in the future with a
substantive federal-question determination."
Edelman, supra,
at 668. See also
Quern v.
Jordan, 440 U. S., at 337
(a "federal court, consistent with the Eleventh Amendment, may
enjoin state
304
officials to conform their future conduct to the requirements of
federal law, even though such an injunction may have an ancillary
effect on the state treasury"). However burdensome it may be to the
State when its officers are ordered to stop violating federal law,
it is not the cost of future compliance with federal law, but its
character as such, that counts. See,
e. g., id., at 347-349;
Milliken v.
Bradley, 433 U. S. 267, 288-290
(1977);
Edelman, supra, at 664-668.6 In this case, of
course, the State has not identified any charge on its funds that
might be comparable to the cost of compliance approved in
Edelman: the consequence of any success the Tribe might
ultimately have would simply be the end of a regulatory regime
(including some fee income) that federal law would
6 While the principal opinion suggests these cases embody a
"careful balancing and accommodation of state interests when
determining whether the
Young exception applies in a given
case,"
ante, at 278, in fact they simply reflect the Court's
effort to demarcate the line between prospective and retrospective
relief. That
Young represents a "balance offederal and state
interests,"
Papasan v.
Allain, 478 U. S. 265, 277
(1986), does not mean the doctrine's application should be balanced
against other factors in any given case. Instead,
Young's
rule recognizing federal judicial power in suits against state
officers to enjoin ongoing violations of federal law itself strikes
the requisite balance between state and federal interests. Where
these conditions are met, no additional "balancing" is required or
warranted.
The principal opinion suggests that we held
Young to
apply in
Milliken v.
Bradley, 433 U. S. 267 (1977),
because the complaint sought to vindicate civil liberties and
accordingly involved strong federal interest. See
ante, at
279. The undeniable federal interest in protecting civil liberties,
however, was not the reason we applied the
Young remedy in
Milliken. The sole enquiry in this regard was whether the
relief sought was fairly characterized as prospective. See 433 U.
S., at 289 (noting that decree "fits squarely within the
prospective-compliance exception reaffirmed by
Edelman").
Given that we do not view a suit against a state officer for
prospective relief as a suit against the State, the fact, as the
majority in
Seminole Tribe reaffirmed, see
Seminole Tribe
of Fla. v.
Florida, 517 U. S. 44, 59 (1996), that
Congress may abrogate state immunity from suit in legislation
enacted pursuant to § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment has no bearing
on
Young's application.
305
show the officers to lack any authority to maintain on the
State's behalf.
What this straightforward analysis thus shows, precedent
confirms. We have already seen that since the time of
Young,
as well as long before it, this Court has consistently held that a
public officer's assertion of property title in the name of a
government immune to suit cannot defeat federal jurisdiction over
an individual's suit to be rid of interference with the property
rights he claims. See,
e. g., Treasure Salvors, 458 U. S.,
at 685-690 (opinion of STEVENS, J.);
Tindal, 167 U. S., at
221-223;
Stanley v.
Schwalby, 162 U. S. 255, 270271
(1896);
Lee, 106 U. S., at 210. By a parity of reasoning, we
have of course drawn the jurisdictional line short of ultimately
quieting title (which would run directly against the State itself
as putative title holder and not against its officers) or limiting
the affected government in any subsequent quiet title action. "It
is a judgment to the effect only that, as between the plaintiff and
the defendants, the former is entitled to possession of the
property in question, the latter having shown no valid authority to
withhold possession from the plaintiff."
Tindal, supra, at
223; see also
Lee, supra, at 222. If dissatisfied with a
federal court's interpretation of federal law in a suit against its
officers, a State may itself subsequently "bring any action that
may be appropriate to establish and protect whatever claim it has
to the premises in dispute." 7
Tindal, supra, at 223;
Lee, supra, at 222 ("[T]he government is always at liberty,
notwithstanding any such judgment, to avail itself of all the
remedies which the
7 One option not available to the State here would be to condemn
the lands outright. Federal law prevents the State from exercising
eminent domain or otherwise acquiring tribal lands directly from
the Tribe. See Rev. Stat. § 2116, 25 U. S. C. § 177. Efforts by
state and local governments to regulate or acquire Indian lands
accordingly may violate federal law, but cannot exact a taking.
Tribes possess the right under federal common law to sue to enforce
their possessory rights in land.
County of Oneida v.
Oneida Indian Nation of N. Y.,
470 U. S. 226, 235-236
(1985).
306
law allows to every person, natural or artificial, for the
vindication and assertion of its rights"). See also
Treasure
Salvors, supra, at 688 (opinion of STEVENS, J.).8 This, of
course, is a right that a State always has after an official has
lost a
Young suit, whatever its particular subject.
In sum, the Tribe seeks no damages or restitution to compensate
for the State's exercise of authority over the land, nor does it
ask for rescission of a past transfer of property. It says that
state officers, by their continuing regulation, are committing an
ongoing violation of federal law that may be halted by an
injunction against the state officers. If the Tribe were to prove
what it claims, it would establish "precisely the type of
continuing violation for which a remedy may permissibly be
fashioned under
Young." Papasan v.
Allain, 478 U. S. 265, 282
(1986).
II A
The first of the two points common to the opinions displacing
Ex parte Young here is that this case pierces
Young's
distinction between State and officer because the relief
8 In this case, were the District Court to hold for the Tribe
and conclude that federal law precludes state regulation, the Quiet
Title Act, 28 U. S. C. § 2409a, may well preclude the State from
bringing a subsequent action to quiet title to the land at issue,
unless the United States consents to suit. This fact, however, has
no bearing on
Young's application. The absence of
jurisdiction under the statute to entertain a suit where the Tribe
would be the defendant says nothing about whether the Eleventh
Amendment, as construed by this Court, bars a suit (i.
e.,
whether the State is the true defendant) where the Tribe is the
plaintiff. The two questions are simply independent of each other.
Nor (even assuming that the
Young and sovereign immunity
rules are convertible into doctrines of equity) does this state of
affairs provide any equitable justification for foreclosing the
Tribe's suit: a congressionally imposed limitation on
federal-question jurisdiction is hardly a fault within the meaning
of equity practice, see,
e. g., D. Dobbs, Law of Remedies §
2.4(2) (2d ed. 1993), and the Tribe, in any event, bears no
responsibility for Congress's decision to enact the statute.
307
sought would be indistinguishable in practice from a decree
quieting title. See
ante, at 281 ("Tribe's suit is the
functional equivalent of a quiet title action which implicates
special sovereignty interests");
ante, at 282 (relief sought
is "close to the functional equivalent of quiet title");
ante, at 289 (opinion of O'CONNOR, J.) ("suit is the
functional equivalent of an action to quiet its title"). If this
argument were to the point it would, to begin with, render
erroneous the holdings in
Treasure Salvors, for example, and
Lee (as interpreted by
Larson, 337 U. S., at
696-697).9 In each of those cases, too, the individual plaintiffs'
success against state officers was an aspersion on the government's
claim of title. But a consideration of the alternatives shows why
such aspersion was rightly accepted as a fair price to pay for the
jurisdiction to consider individual claims of federal right in
those two title cases, as it has been accepted generally. The one
alternative, of settling the matter of title by compelling the
State itself to appear in a federal-question suit, is barred by
Eleventh Amendment doctrine. See,
e. g., Seminole Tribe, 517
U. S., at 54;
Alabama v.
Pugh, 438 U. S. 781, 782 (1978)
(per curiam); Chandler v.
Dix, 194 U. S. 590, 591
(1904). The
9 JUSTICE O'CONNOR says that
Treasure Salvors is
inapposite because the plurality's discussion of the property claim
there, in her view, focused on whether the state officials were
acting ultra vires state-law authority, see
ante, at
289-290. But the plurality's analysis in
Treasure Salvors
was not so limited, and noted that the plaintiff salvage company
claimed that Florida state officials lacked authority to retain
treasure recovered from the sunken galleon because the galleon had
been found on submerged land belonging to the United States, not
Florida, as determined under the Submerged Lands Act, § 2(b), 67
Stat. 29, 43 U. S. C. § 1301(b), and our decision in
United
States v.
Florida, 425 U. S. 791 (1976). See
Treasure Salvors, 458 U. S., at 676, and n. 5. While the
plurality noted further that the company claimed that the state
officials lacked authority under state law to retain the treasure,
see id., at 692-693, there was no question that the company claimed
ownership of the treasure under federal law. Accordingly, I
disagree both that
Treasure Salvors is inapplicable and that
its reasoning was "narrowed" by
Pennhurst State School and
Hospital v.
Halderman, 465 U. S. 89 (1984). Cf.
ante, at 290 (opinion of O'CONNOR, J.).
308
other, of leaving an individual powerless to seek any federal
remedy for violation of a federal right, would deplete the federal
judicial power to a point the Framers could not possibly have
intended, given a history of officer liability riding tandem with
sovereign immunity extending back to the Middle Ages. See Jaffe,
Suits Against Governments and Officers: Sovereign Immunity, 77
Harv. L. Rev. 1, 18 (1963); Erlich, No. XII: Proceedings Against
the Crown (1216-1377) pp. 28-29, in 6 Oxford Studies in Social and
Legal History (P. Vinogradoff ed. 1921). The holdings in
Treasure Salvors and
Lee, like the holding that
should obtain here, represent a line drawn short of such an
extreme, and if the Court may curse it as formalistic so may any
line be cursed that must be drawn somewhere between unacceptable
extremes. In the title cases cited, as in any other such suit, the
State could ultimately settle its title by choosing to litigate the
disputed title once and for all; in most cases, of course, the
State may choose its own forum, though in this instance it would
need the permission of the United States, see n. 8,
supra.
(As that note previously explained, the fact that the United States
is required to consent to such a suit against an Indian tribe has
nothing to do with the doctrinal basis of
Young and is
hardly an inequity to the States when viewed historically. See n.
11,
infra.) The line is a fair via media between the
extremes.
What is equally significant, finally, is that an officer suit
implicating title is no more or less the "functional equivalent" of
an action against the government than any other
Young suit.
States are functionally barred from imposing a railroad rate found
unconstitutional when enforced by a state officer; States are
functionally barred from withholding welfare benefits when their
officers have violated federal law on timely payment; States are
functionally barred from locking up prisoners whom their wardens
are told to release. There is nothing unique about the consequences
of an officer suit
309
involving title, and if the Court's reasoning were good in a
title case it would be good in any
Young case.
B
The second joint reason that commands a majority turns on the
fact that something more than mere title would be affected if the
Tribe were to prevail. As the principal opinion puts it, "[t]he
suit seeks, in effect, a determination that the lands in question
are not even within the regulatory jurisdiction of the State,"
ante, at 282, and state ownership of submerged lands
"uniquely implicate[s] sovereign interests,"
ante, at 284,
such that the injunction sought by the Tribe would have an unusual
effect on the State's "dignity and status,"
ante, at 287.
This is the same reason that JUSTICE O'CONNOR gives for concluding
that
Lee and
Tindal are not controlling here. See
ante, at 290-291. She points out that
Lee and
Tindal involved claims to land that remained subject to
state regulation even after the government officers were held to
lack possessory authority, while here, if the Tribe were to
prevail, no such regulatory power would be retained given that the
submerged lands would no longer be "within Idaho's sovereign
jurisdiction."
Ante, at 289.
While this point is no doubt correct, it has no bearing on
Young's application in this case. The relevant enquiry, as
noted, is whether the state officers are exercising ultra vires
authority over the disputed submerged lands. If they are, a federal
court may enjoin their actions, even though such a ruling would
place the land beyond Idaho's regulatory jurisdiction and
accordingly deny state officers regulatory authority. Idaho
indisputably has a significant sovereign interest in regulating its
submerged lands, see
Utah Div. of State Lands v.
United
States, 482 U. S.
193, 195 (1987), but it has no legitimate sovereign interest in
regulating submerged lands located outside state borders.
If, indeed, there were any doubt that claims implicating state
regulatory jurisdiction are as much subject to
Young
310
as cases contesting the possession of property, the facts of Ex
parte Young itself would suffice to place that doubt to rest. Young
was a suit to enjoin a State's Attorney General from enforcing a
state statute regulating railroad rates and threatening violators
with heavy sanctions. One would have difficulty imagining a state
activity any more central to state sovereignty than such economic
regulation or any more expressive of its governmental character
than the provision for heavy fines. A State obliged to choose
between power to regulate a lake and lake bed on an Indian
reservation and power to regulate economic affairs and punish
offenders would not (knowing nothing more) choose the lake.
Implications for regulatory jurisdiction, therefore, do nothing to
displace Ex parte Young.
III
The remaining points of exception are, as I understand, confined
to the principal opinion.
A
That opinion suggests that the line between officer and State
may be dissolved for jurisdictional purposes because the state
officials here were acting in accordance with state law in their
administration of the disputed land: if state law purports to
authorize the acts complained of, they are not unauthorized for
purposes of discerning the line between officials and their State
under the Eleventh Amendment.
Ante, at 281, 286-287.
If compliance with state-law authority were a defense to a Young
suit, however, there would be precious few Young suits. State-law
compliance is in fact a characteristic circumstance of most cases
maintained under Young, see, e. g., Edelman, 415 U. S., at 655,
which are brought not because the defendant officials are mavericks
under state law but because the state law is claimed to violate
federal law made controlling by the Supremacy Clause. Young,
accordingly, made it clear from the start that in a
federal-question suit
311
against a state official, action in violation of valid federal
law was necessarily beyond the scope of any official authority,
thus rendering the official an individual for Eleventh Amendment
purposes and thus obviating an encroachment on the State's
immunity. 209 U. S., at 159-160; see also
Pennhurst, 465 U.
S., at 102-103, 105;
Quern, 440 U. S., at 337;
Scheuer v.
Rhodes, 416 U. S. 232, 237 (1974)
(noting that since
Young, "it has been settled that the
Eleventh Amendment provides no shield for a state official
confronted by a claim that he had deprived another of a federal
right under the color of state law").
In this case, indeed, the allusion to conformity with state law
is doubly misplaced, for it is common ground here that state law is
irrelevant if under federal law the combined executive and
congressional action vested title to the submerged lands in the
Tribe. Each party is claiming under federal law, and the only issue
is whether the regulatory action by the state officials is
authorized or ultra vires as judged under that federal law. The
jurisdictional question is posed, in other words, just as if this
were a suit against a federal officer, as in
Larson, 337 U.
S., at 701-702, and this case is essentially like
Treasure
Salvors, 458 U. S., at 675676, and n. 5, 695-697, in which the
outcome turned directly on title under federal law.
B
The principal opinion's next reason for displacing
Young
rests on its view that the declaratory and injunctive relief the
Tribe seeks is functionally equivalent to a money judgment and thus
would amount to an impermissibly retrospective remedy. "[I]f the
Tribe were to prevail, Idaho's sovereign interest in its lands and
waters would be affected in a degree fully as intrusive as almost
any conceivable retroactive levy upon funds in its Treasury."
Ante, at 287. The principal opinion's assumption, in other
words, is that intrusiveness is retrospectivity, an equation false
to customary language usage and antithetical under extant
Eleventh
312
Amendment doctrine to probably every case decided under
Ex
parte Young, including the original. The exercise of
Young jurisdiction for vindicating individual federal rights
is necessarily "intrusive," simply because state officials sued
under
Young are almost always doing exactly what their
States' legislative and administrative authorities intend them to
do. The state officers in
Treasure Salvors were expected to
secure 25 percent of the treasure salvaged from a sunken galleon
for the State of Florida; an order to bring the treasure before a
federal court in admiralty was nothing if not a threat to the
State's expectations and intrusive into its affairs. See 458 U. S.,
at 678-679, 694 (opinion of STEVENS, J.). So was the injunction
requiring the issuance of welfare benefits within federally
mandated time limits in
Edelman, see 415 U. S., at 656-659;
and the order to get out of Arlington Cemetery in
Lee, see
106 U. S., at 197,220-221; and the order barring enforcement of a
rail rate regulation in
Young itself, see 209 U. S., at 132;
and any order granting relief in any federal habeas case, see,
e. g., Brennan v.
Stewart, 834 F. 2d 1248, 1252, n. 6
(CA5 1988). If intrusiveness were to be a limitation on
Young, the limitation would be terminal.10
C
A third reason proposed by the principal opinion in support of
today's result is the supposedly supplemental character of
federal-question jurisdiction under
Young, subject to giving
way whenever the private plaintiff would have entree
10 Under existing statutes it would not be even a partial answer
to say that Congress has the power under § 5 of the Fourteenth
Amendment to abrogate state sovereign immunity, as to cases within
the subject matter covered by the state habeas statute, 28 U. S. C.
§ 2254, and Rev. Stat. § 1979, 42 U. S. C. § 1983; habeas claims
are directed to state officers, see 28 U. S. C. § 2243; States are
not persons subject to suit under § 1983, see
Will v.
Michigan Dept. of State Police, 491 U. S. 58, 71 (1989);
and in neither instance could Congress be said to have intended to
abrogate an immunity arising under the Eleventh Amendment.
313
to a state forum able to grant the relief sought. But this is
mistaken in theory and contrary to practice.
Federal-question jurisdiction turns on subject matter, not the
need to do some job a state court may wish to avoid; it addresses
not the adequacy of a state judicial system, but the responsibility
of federal courts to vindicate what is supposed to be controlling
federal law. See
Green v.
Mansour, 474 U. S., at 68
("[T]he availability of prospective relief of the sort awarded in
Ex parte Young gives life to the Supremacy Clause. Remedies
designed to end a continuing violation of federal law are necessary
to vindicate the federal interest in assuring the supremacy of that
law");
Pennhurst, supra, at 105 ("[T]he
Young
doctrine has been accepted as necessary to permit the federal
courts to vindicate federal rights and hold state officials
responsible to the supreme authority of the United States .... Our
decisions repeatedly have emphasized that the
Young doctrine
rests on the need to promote the vindication of federal rights"
(citations and internal quotation marks omitted)). See also
Haring v.
Prosise, 462 U. S. 306, 322-323 (1983)
(rejecting proposed rule that would relegate certain § 1983 claims
to state court in the face of the statute's basic policy of
providing a federal forum for vindication of federal rights).l1
11 Many federal cases with nondiverse parties, of course, might
well have been brought as state cases if state relief could
reasonably have been expected. Section 1983, for example, reflects
the "grave congressional concern that the state courts had been
deficient in protecting federal rights."
Allen v.
McCurry, 449 U.
S. 90,98-99 (1980) (citations omitted). See also
Patsy
v.
Board of Regents of Fla., 457 U. S. 496, 503-507
(1982); American Law Institute, Study of the Division of
Jurisdiction Between State and Federal Courts 168 (1968). And when
the plaintiff suing the state officers has been an Indian tribe,
the readiness of the state courts to vindicate the federal right
has been less than perfect. Cf.
United States v.
Kagama, 118 U.
S. 375, 384 (1886) ("Because of the local ill feeling, the
people of the States where [the Indians] are found are often their
deadliest enemies"); Comment,
Oneida Nation v. County of
Oneida: Tribal Rights of Action and the Indian Trade and
Intercourse Act, 84 Colum. L. Rev. 1852, 18581859 (1984) ("State
courts ... were generally hostile to tribal plaintiffs,
314
Thus, it is hardly surprising that
Ex parte Young itself
gives no hint that the Court thought the relief sought in federal
court was unavailable in the Minnesota state courts at the time.
Young, indeed, relied on prior cases in which federal courts
had entertained suits against state officers notwithstanding the
fact, as the
Young Court expressly noted, that state forums
were available in which the plaintiffs could have vindicated the
same claims. See 209 U. S., at 153-155 (citing
Reagan v.
Farmers' Loan &
Trust Co., 154 U. S. 362 (1894), and
Smyth v.
Ames, 169 U. S. 466 (1898)).
Reagan, like
Young, was a rate case, in which the
plaintiffs sued the State's Railroad Commission and the State
Attorney General in federal court, seeking to enjoin enforcement of
the commission's rate order and any attempt by the State's Attorney
General to recover penalties for its violation. Federal
jurisdiction was exercised, even though a state statute authorized
suit against the commission in state court. While it is true, as
the principal opinion notes, see
ante, at 274, that the
opinion in
Reagan reflects the then-prevalent view that
state consent to suit in a state forum amounted to consent in the
federal forum, see
Reagan, supra, at 392; contra,
Smith v.
Reeves, 178 U. S. 436, 441 (1900)
(rejecting that view), the
Reagan Court permitted the suit
to proceed in federal court not on the ground that the state
statute authorized a state suit but regardless of that point. The
Court viewed the case as one to enjoin state officers from
enforcing a state statute in violation of federal law, remarking
that it "cannot ... in any fair sense be considered a suit against
the State." 154 U. S., at 392. Likewise, in
Smyth, the
historic rate case, a state statute authorized suit in state court
to
for often the states themselves were the primary violators of
tribal land rights"); Clinton & Hotopp, Judicial Enforcement of
the Federal Restraints on Alienation of Indian Land: The Origins of
the Eastern Land Claims, 31 Me. L. Rev. 17, 42-49 (1979)
(describing the history of state evasions of the federal statutory
restraint on alienations of Indian land and the federal
response).
315
challenge the constitutionality of rates imposed on railroads,
but the Court permitted the federal suit for injunctive relief
against the State Attorney General to go forward on the ground that
it was not against the State. See 169 U. S., at 518. Had that not
been clear enough, the opinion in
Young would explain that
in Smyth, the Court "did not base its decision on that section [of
state law authorizing suit in state court] when it held that a suit
of the nature of that before it was not a suit against a State,
although brought against individual state officers for the purpose
of enjoining them from enforcing, either by civil proceeding or
indictment, an unconstitutional enactment to the injury of the
plaintiff's right."
Young, supra, at 154.
Nor did the
Young Court hint that some inadequacy of
state remedies was tantamount to the unavailability of a state
forum. See
ante, at 271-274 (principal opinion). The opinion
in
Young and other cases did indeed include observations
that remedies available at law might provide inadequate relief to
an aggrieved plaintiff, and
Young itself noted that the
failure to comply with the state statute would result in criminal
penalties and hefty fines. But these remarks about the severity of
the sanctions supported the Court's conviction that an equitable
remedy was appropriate, see
Young, supra, at 148, 163-166;
see also
Poindexter v.
Greenhow, 114 U. S. 270, 299
(1885), not that a state forum was unavailable or federal
jurisdiction subject to state preemption. 12 The principal
opinion's notion that availability of
12 The principal opinion also appears to rest on a misreading of
Osborn v.
Bank of United States, 9 Wheat. 738 (1824),
as holding that the officer suit could proceed only because a suit
directly against the State was prohibited. See
ante, at 272.
Chief Justice Marshall never suggested that a suit against the
officers "would be barred" if the State could be named. Instead, he
made clear that since the suit would be allowed to proceed if the
State could be made a party, it should be allowed to proceed in its
absence. The Chief Justice wrote: "[I]t would be subversive of the
best established principles to say that the laws could not afford
the same remedies against the agent employed in doing the wrong,
which they would
316
a state forum should have some bearing on the applicability of
Ex parte Young is thus as much at odds with precedent as
with basic jurisdictional principles.
There is one more strike against the principal opinion's
assumption that there is some significance in the availability of a
state forum. The day the Court decided
Young, it also
decided
General Oil Co. v.
Crain, 209 U. S. 211 (1908).
General Oil reviewed an order of the Supreme Court of
Tennessee dismissing a corporation's suit against a state officer
for relief from what it claimed was his violation of the National
Constitution. The state court had said it lacked jurisdiction in
the matter after construing the suit as one against the State,
which was immune as sovereign. This Court held the dismissal to be
reversible error,13 ruling as a matter of federallaw that the suit
could not have been construed as being against the State. See id.,
at 226-228. State law conferring immunity on its officers could
not, in other words, constitutionally excuse a state court of
general jurisdiction from an obligation to hear a suit brought to
enjoin a state official's action as exceeding his authority because
unconstitutional.14
afford against him, could his principal be joined in suit."
Osborn, 9 Wheat., at 843. And while the Court recognized the
equitable remedy provided relief "more beneficial and complete than
the law can give," id., at 845, the Court did not suggest that a
remedy in state court was absent, or that any significance attached
to the availability of a state forum.
13 The judgment was not actually reversed because the Court
reached the previously unreviewed challenge to the official's
action and found it meritless. See
General Oil Co. v.
Crain, 209 U. S., at 231.
14 General Oil's application is not limited to those
cases in which a remedy in federal court is unavailable,
notwithstanding the observation that state relief was required
given the Eleventh Amendment bar to suit in federal court,
General Oil Co. v.
Crain, 209 U. S., at 226, since
Young ensured that the federal courts would be open for
injunctive claims just like those at issue in
General Oil.
See Fallon, The Ideologies of Federal Courts Law, 74 Va. L. Rev.
1141, 1209, n. 312 (1988) (sentences surrounding the references in
General Oil to an unavailable federal forum make clear that
"the crucial distinction determining the obligations of the state
courts is not one involving the availability or nonavailability of
federal judicial relief; it is, rather, 'between valid and invalid
state laws, as determining'
317
Cf.
Martinez v.
California, 444 U. S. 277, 284 (1980)
(state immunity statute cannot immunize an officer from a § 1983
suit in state court). The consequence is that in every case in
which
Ex parte Young supports the exercise of
federalquestion jurisdiction against a state officer,
General
Oil prohibits the declination of state jurisdiction over the
same officer on state immunity grounds. Insofar as state-court
jurisdiction would count against
Ex parte Young in one
case,15 it would presumably count against it as heavily in every
case.
whether the suit is one against the state .... Because a state
cannot authorize its officers to behave unconstitutionally,
official action pursuant to an invalid state law cannot be
protected by sovereign immunity; and a state court cannot decline
to exercise jurisdiction on this basis") (quoting
General Oil,
supra, at 226); Monaghan, Third Party Standing, 84 Colum. L.
Rev. 277, 294, n. 97 (1984) ("[I]fprospective relief is a necessary
concomitant of a federal right, availability of such relief in
federal courts may not free the states from an obligation to
provide it as well").
Nor was
General Oil overruled or otherwise "abandoned" by
Georgia R. R. &
Banking Co. v.
Musgrove,
335 U. S. 900 (1949), in which the Court dismissed an appeal from a
decision of the Supreme Court of Georgia holding that state
sovereign immunity barred suits asserting constitutional claims
against state officials. Cf. 16B C. Wright, A. Miller, & E.
Cooper, Federal Practice and Procedure § 4024, pp. 363-364 (2d ed.
1996). The one-paragraph
per curiam dismissal in
Musgrove stated that an adequate nonfederal ground supported
the state court's decision but did not identify the state ground
involved; the posture of the case suggests that the Court may have
viewed the lower court's decision as based on a valid state law
regarding the timing and not the existence of state remedies. See
Fallon,
supra, at 1211, n. 317.
Finally, insofar as
General Oil may be read to require
that States provide some adequate judicial remedy to redress acts
of state officials that violate federal law, see,
e. g.,
Collins, Article III Cases, State Court Duties, and the Madisonian
Compromise, 1995 Wis. L. Rev. 39, 164, n. 359, but not necessarily
injunctive relief in particular, its relevance for our purposes
remains the same, that is, that every litigant seeking prospective
relief in federal court under
Young may obtain some adequate
redress in state court as well.
15 Quite apart even from what
General Oil may mandate, it
appears that in all 50 States, as a matter of course, private
plaintiffs may obtain declaratory and injunctive relief in state
court for the acts of state officials in
318
IV
None of the considerations that the principal OpInIOn would
weigh in the course of its balancing process in this
circumstances where relief would be available in federal court
under
Young. Some state courts have announced as a general
rule that a suit seeking to enjoin acts by a state official that
violate federal law, or are otherwise unauthorized, is not a suit
against the State. See,
e. g., Aland v.
Graham, 287
Ala. 226, 229-230, 250 So. 2d 677, 679 (1971);
Etheredge v.
Bradley, 480 P. 2d 414, 416 (Alaska 1971);
Doe v.
Heintz, 204 Conn. 17, 31-32, 526 A. 2d 1318, 1326 (1987);
Georgia Public Service Comm'n v.
Atlanta Gas Light
Co., 205 Ga. 863, 869-874, 55 S. E. 2d 618, 623-625
(1949);
W H. Greenwell, Ltd. v.
Department of Land and Natural
Resources, 50 Haw. 207, 208-209, 436 P. 2d 527, 528 (1968);
Century Distilling Co. v.
Defenbach, 61 Idaho
192,200-203,99 P. 2d 56, 59-60 (1940);
Noorman v.
Department of Public Works &
Buildings, 366 Ill.
216, 220-222, 8 N. E. 2d 637, 639, appeal dism'd, 302 U. S. 637
(1937);
Rockford Memorial Hospital v.
Department of Human
Rights, 272 Ill. App. 3d 751, 754-758, 651 N. E. 2d 649,
653-655, appeal denied, 163 Ill. 2d 586, 657 N. E. 2d 638
(1995); Collins v.
State Bd. of Social Welfare, 248
Iowa 369, 372-373,81 N. W. 2d 4, 6 (1957);
Board of Trustees of
the Univ. of Ky. v.
Hayse, 782 S. W. 2d 609, 616 (Ky.
1989), cert. denied, 497 U. S. 1025 and 498 U. S. 938
(1990);
Carso v.
Board of Liquidation of State Debt, 205 La.
368, 371-374, 17 So. 2d 358, 360 (1944);
Jones v.
Maine
State Highway Comm'n, 238 A. 2d 226, 229-230 (Me. 1968);
Thompson v.
Auditor General, 261 Mich. 624, 628-630,
247 N. W. 360,362 (1933);
L. K. v.
Gregg, 425 N. W.
2d 813, 818, n. 3 (Minn. 1988);
Kleban v.
Missouri,
363 Mo. 7, 15-17,247 S. W. 2d 832, 837 (1952);
Rein v.
Johnson, 149 Neb. 67, 68-69, 30 N. W. 2d 548, 551-552
(1947), cert. denied, 335 U. S. 814 (1948);
Grinnell v.
State, 121 N. H. 823, 825-826, 435 A. 2d 523, 525 (1981);
Abelson's, Inc. v.
New Jersey State Board of
Optometrists, 5 N. J. 412, 416-418, 75 A. 2d 867, 869 (1950);
Ramah Navaho School Bd. v.
Bureau of Revenue, 104 N.
M. 302, 308, 720 P. 2d 1243, 1249 (Ct. App. 1986);
Carter v.
City of Las Cruces, 121 N. M. 580, 583, 915 P. 2d 336, 338
(Ct. App. 1996);
Corum v.
University of North
Carolina, 330 N. C. 761,771, and n. 3, 772,413 S. E. 2d
276,283, and n. 2
(1992); Ennis v.
Dasovick, 506 N.
W. 2d 386, 392 (N. D. 1993);
Schwarz v.
Board of
Trustees, 31 Ohio St. 3d 267, 271-274, 510 N. E. 2d 808,
812-813
(1987); Gast v.
State, 36 Ore. App. 441,
443-447, 585 P. 2d 12, 15-17 (1978);
Philadelphia Life Ins.
Co. v.
Commonwealth, 410 Pa. 571, 574-577, 190 A. 2d
111, 113-114 (1963);
Ware Shoals Mfg. Co. v.
Jones,
78 S. C. 211, 216-219, 58 S. E. 811, 813 (1907);
White Eagle
Oil &
Refining Co. v.
Gunderson, 48 S. D.
608, 614-619, 205 N. W. 614, 617-618 (1925);
American
319
case is a legitimate reason for questioning jurisdiction over
the state officials, and nothing about property title or regulatory
jurisdiction justifies the majority's exception to
Young's
guarantee of a federal forum to a private federal claimant against
state officials.
Trucking Associations, Inc. v.
Conway, 146 Vt.
579, 586-587, 508 A. 2d 408,413 (1986);
State ex rel.
Robinson v.
Superior Court, 182 Wash. 277, 281-284,46 P.
2d 1046, 1049-1050 (1935);
Pittsburgh Elevator Co. v.
West Va. Bd. of Regents, 310 S. E. 2d 675, 685 (W. Va.
1983);
Wisconsin Fertilizer Assn. v.
Karns, 39 Wis.
2d 95, 100-102, 158 N. W. 2d 294, 297 (1968);
Oyler v.
State, 618 P. 2d 1042, 1047-1048 (Wyo. 1980).
Other States have permitted such suits to proceed without
discussing the jurisdictional basis for the action. See,
e. g.,
Carroll v.
Robinson, 178 Ariz. 453, 458-459, 874 P. 2d
1010, 1015 (Ct. App. 1994);
Honor v.
Yamuchi, 307
Ark. 324, 330-332, 820 S. W. 2d 267, 271-272 (1991);
Endler
v.
Schutzbank, 68 Cal. 2d 162, 180-182,436 P. 2d 297,
310-311 (1968);
International Society for Krishna Consciousness,
Inc. v.
Colorado State Fair &
Industrial
Exposition Comm'n, 199 Colo. 265,268-269, 610 P. 2d 486, 489
(1980);
Gebhart v.
Belton, 33 Del. Ch. 144, 91 A. 2d
137 (1952), rev'd on other grounds,
349 U. S. 294 (1955);
Mercer v.
Hemmings, 170 So. 2d 33, 35 (Fla.
1964);
Libertarian Party of Florida v.
Smith, 660 So. 2d 807
(Dist. Ct. App. Fla. 1995);
Darling v.
Kansas Water
Office, 245 Kan. 45, 52-54, 774 P. 2d 941, 947 (1989);
Gumbhir v.
Kansas State Bd. of Pharmacy, 231 Kan.
507, 512-515, 646 P. 2d 1078, 1084 (1982);
Secretary of
State v.
Bryson, 244 Md. 418, 423-424, 428-429, 224 A.
2d 277, 280, 283 (1966);
Maryland Comm. for Fair
Representation v.
Tawes, 228 Md. 412,423-427,439-440,
180 A. 2d 656, 662-663, 671 (1962);
Apkin v.
Treasurer &
Receiver General, 401 Mass.
427,428-430,517 N. E. 2d 141, 141-142 (1988);
Wicks v.
Mississippi Valley State Univ., 536 So. 2d 20 (Miss. 1988);
Orozco v.
Day, 934 P. 2d 1009, 1017 (Mont. 1997);
Northern Nevada Assn. of Injured Workers v.
Nevada State
Industrial Insurance System, 107 Nev. 108, 115-116, 807 P. 2d
728, 733 (1991);
New York Central R. Co. v.
Lefkowitz, 12 N. Y. 2d 305, 309-310, 189 N. E. 2d 695, 697
(1963);
Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Assn. v.
Anthony, 879 P. 2d 845, 847-848 (Okla. Ct. App. 1994);
Retired Adjunct Professors of the State of Rhode Island v.
Almond, 690 A. 2d 1342, 1348 (R. I. 1997);
Riggs v.
Burson, 941 S. W. 2d 44 (Tenn. 1997);
Sanders v.
State Dept. of Public Welfare, 472 S. W. 2d 179, 183-184
(Ct. App. Tex. 1971), error dism'd (1972);
H. L. v.
Matheson, 604 P. 2d 907 (Utah 1979), aff'd,
450 U. S. 398 (1981);
State Bd. of Elections v.
Forb, 214 Va. 264,265-266,
199 S. E. 2d 527, 528 (1973).
Comments
Be the first to comment
Leave a Comment