Cite as: 505 U. S. 1 (1992)
Opinion of Thomas, J.
without more a denial of the equal protection of the laws." Id., at 8.
See also Nashville, C. & St. L. R. Co. v. Browning, 310 U. S. 362 (1940).
The Court today promises not to have overruled Snowden, see ante, at 16, n. 8, but its disclaimer, I think, is in vain. For if, as the Court suggests, what made the assessor's method unreasonable was her supposed violation of state law, the Court's interpretation of Allegheny Pittsburgh recasts in this case the proposition that we had earlier rejected. See Glennon, 58 Geo. Wash. L. Rev., at 268-269; Cohen, 38 UCLA L. Rev., at 93-94; Ely, Another Spin on Allegheny Pittsburgh, 38 UCLA L. Rev. 107, 108-109 (1990). In repudiating Snowden, moreover, the Court threatens settled principles not only of the Fourteenth Amendment but of the Eleventh. We have held that the Eleventh Amendment bars federal courts from ordering state actors to conform to the dictates of state law. Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman, 465 U. S. 89 (1984). After today, however, a plaintiff might be able to invoke federal jurisdiction to have state actors obey state law, for a claim that the state actor has violated state law appears to have become a claim that he has violated the Constitution. See Cohen, supra, at 103; Ely, supra, at 109-110 ("[B]y the Court's logic, all violations of state law—at least those violations that end (as most do) in the treatment of some people better than others—are theoretically convertible into violations of the Equal Protection Clause").
I understand that the Court prefers to distinguish Allegheny Pittsburgh, but in doing so, I think, the Court has left our equal protection jurisprudence in disarray. The analysis appropriate to this case is straightforward. Unless a classification involves suspect classes or fundamental rights, judicial scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause demands only a conceivable rational basis for the challenged state distinction. See Fritz, supra; Kassel v. Consolidated Freight-
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