200
Opinion of the Court
federal-court action. He refiled his FELA suit in a South Carolina state court, and this is the case now before us.
The state trial court dismissed Hilton's complaint on the ground that FELA does not authorize an action for money damages against an agency of the State, even if suit is maintained in a state forum. Though acknowledging that in Parden v. Terminal Railway of Alabama Docks Dept., supra, we interpreted FELA to permit those actions, the trial court said that Parden "has been severely limited by subsequent decisions of the Supreme Court." App. to Pet. for Cert. 22. The court held that Parden "is no longer good law," id., at 23, and ordered the action dismissed, whereupon Hilton appealed to the South Carolina Supreme Court.
While his appeal was pending, the South Carolina Supreme Court decided Freeman v. South Carolina Public Railways Commission, 302 S. C. 51, 393 S. E. 2d 383 (1990). Addressing the same issue raised by this case, Freeman held that FELA does not subject States to liability in state-court suits. As did the trial court, the State Supreme Court acknowledged our Parden holding but concluded that in effect it had been overruled by our subsequent course of decisions.
In Parden we held that FELA authorizes suits for damages against state-owned railroads, and that by entering the business of operating a railroad a State waives its Eleventh Amendment immunity from suit in federal court. The latter holding was overruled in Welch, to accord with our more recent Eleventh Amendment jurisprudence, 483 U. S., at 478; but the Welch Court was explicit in declining to decide whether in the Jones Act (or in FELA) Congress intended to create a cause of action against the States. Id., at 476, n. 6 (plurality opinion); see also id., at 495 (White, J., concurring). In other words, the Welch decision did not disturb the statutory-construction holding of Parden.
In addressing the latter issue, the South Carolina court found "dispositive" our decision in Will v. Michigan Dept. of State Police, 491 U. S. 58 (1989). Will was a suit brought in
Page: Index Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007