Cite as: 527 U. S. 666 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
Petitioner's second assertion of a property interest rests upon an argument similar to the one just discussed, and suffers from the same flaw. Petitioner argues that businesses are "property" within the meaning of the Due Process Clause, and that Congress legislates under § 5 when it passes a law that prevents state interference with business (which false advertising does). Brief for Petitioner 19-20. The assets of a business (including its good will) unquestionably are property, and any state taking of those assets is unquestionably a "deprivation" under the Fourteenth Amendment. But business in the sense of the activity of doing business, or the activity of making a profit is not property in the ordinary sense—and it is only that, and not any business asset, which is impinged upon by a competitor's false advertising.
Finding that there is no deprivation of property at issue here, we need not pursue the follow-on question that City of Boerne would otherwise require us to resolve: whether the prophylactic measure taken under purported authority of § 5 (viz., prohibition of States' sovereign-immunity claims, which are not in themselves violations of the Fourteenth Amendment) was genuinely necessary to prevent violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. We turn next to the question whether Florida's sovereign immunity, though not abrogated, was voluntarily waived.
IV
We have long recognized that a State's sovereign immunity is "a personal privilege which it may waive at pleasure." Clark v. Barnard, 108 U. S., at 447. The decision to waive that immunity, however, "is altogether voluntary on the part of the sovereignty." Beers v. Arkansas, 20 How. 527, 529 (1858). Accordingly, our "test for determining whether a State has waived its immunity from federal-court jurisdiction is a stringent one." Atascadero State Hospital v. Scan-lon, 473 U. S. 234, 241 (1985). Generally, we will find a waiver either if the State voluntarily invokes our jurisdic-
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