612
Opinion of the Court
approval of state hazardous-waste disposal permit plans); see also 40 CFR §§ 271.1-271.138 (1991) (detailed requirements for state plans).
This litigation began in 1986 when respondent State of Ohio sued petitioner Department of Energy (DOE) in Federal District Court for violations of state and federal pollution laws, including the CWA and RCRA, in operating its uranium-processing plant in Fernald, Ohio. Ohio sought, among other forms of relief, both state and federal civil penalties for past violations of the CWA and RCRA and of state laws enacted to supplant those federal statutes. See, e. g., Complaint ¶ 64 (seeking penalties for violations of state law and of regulations issued pursuant to RCRA); id., ¶ 115 (seeking penalties for violations of state law and of CWA).1 Before the District Court ruled on DOE's motion for dismissal, the parties proposed a consent decree to settle all but one substantive claim,2 and Ohio withdrew all outstanding claims for relief except its request for civil penalties for DOE's alleged past violations. See Consent Decree Between DOE and Ohio, App. 63. By a contemporaneous stipulation, DOE and Ohio agreed on the amount of civil penalties DOE will owe if it is found liable for them, see Stipulation Between DOE and Ohio, id., at 87. The parties thus left for determination under the motion to dismiss only the issue we consider today: whether Congress has waived the National Government's sovereign immunity from liability for civil fines imposed for past failure to comply
1 Federal- and state-law fines differ both as to their amounts and the sovereign that gets them, state-law fines going to the State, and federal-law fines going to the federal treasury. Ohio's state-law fines are currently lower than their federal-law counterparts. See generally Tr. of Oral Arg. 36-37, 49-52; see also Brief for Respondent Ohio 36. The parties have agreed that if DOE is liable for both federal- and state-law fines it will be assessed only for the latter. See Stipulation Between DOE and Ohio, ¶¶ 2.1, 3.1, App. 87, 89, 90.
2 The parties agreed to stay one claim pending completion of a technical study. See Stipulation Between DOE and Ohio, App. 87-88.
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