Cite as: 535 U. S. 635 (2002)
Souter, J., concurring
by means of appellate review in Federal District Court,5 whose jurisdiction to entertain the claim of error the Court today has affirmed. If the District Court should see things Verizon's way and reverse the state commission qua federal regulator, what dishonor would be done to the dignity of the State, which has accepted congressionally conferred power to decide matters of federal law in the first instance?
One answer might be that even naming the state commission as a defendant in a suit for declaratory and injunctive relief in federal court is an unconstitutional indignity. But I do not see how this could be right. At least where the suit does not seek to bar a state authority from applying and enforcing state law, a request for declaratory or injunctive relief is simply a formality for obtaining a process of review. Cf. 4 K. Davis, Administrative Law Treatise 206 (2d ed. 1983) ("[T]he suit for injunction and declaratory judgment in a district court under 28 U. S. C. § 1331 . . . is now always available to reach reviewable [federal] administrative action in absence of a specific statute making some other remedy exclusive"). And as for the nominal position of a State as defendant, "[i]t must be regarded as a settled doctrine of this court . . . 'that the question whether a suit is within the prohibition of the 11th Amendment is not always determined by reference to the nominal parties on the record.' " In re Ayers, 123 U. S. 443, 487 (1887) (alteration in original) (quoting Poindexter v. Greenhow, 114 U. S. 270, 287 (1885)). If the applicability of the Eleventh Amendment pivots on the formalism that a State is found on the wrong side of the "v." in the case name of a regulatory appeal, constitutional immunity becomes nothing more than an accident of captioning practice in utility cases reviewed by courts. For that matter, the formal and nominal position of a governmental body in these circumstances is not even
5 Judicial review of Federal Communications Commission determinations under the Act is committed directly to the Courts of Appeal. 28 U. S. C. § 2342(1); 47 U. S. C. § 402(a) (1994 ed.).
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