Cite as: 513 U. S. 30 (1994)
O'Connor, J., dissenting
controlling weight to the Founders' purpose to "establish Justice." 3 Today's decision is faithful to that purpose.
Justice O'Connor, with whom The Chief Justice, Justice Scalia, and Justice Thomas join, dissenting.
The Court's opinion, as I read it, makes two different points. First, an interstate compact entity is presumptively not entitled to immunity under the Eleventh Amendment, because the States surrendered any such entitlement "[a]s part of the federal plan prescribed by the Constitution." Ante, at 41. When States act in concert under the Interstate Compact Clause, they cede power to each other and to the Federal Government, which, by consenting to the state compact, becomes one of the compact entity's creators. As such, each individual State lacks meaningful control over the entity, and suits against the entity in federal court pose no affront to a State's "dignity." Ibid. Second, in place of the various factors recognized in Lake Country Estates, Inc. v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, 440 U. S. 391 (1979), for determining arm-of-the-state status, we may now substitute a single overriding criterion, vulnerability of the state treasury. If a State does not fund judgments against an entity, that entity is not within the ambit of the Eleventh Amendment, and suits in federal court may proceed unimpeded. By the Court's reckoning, the state treasury is not implicated on these facts. Neither, it follows, is the Eleventh Amendment.
I disagree with both of these propositions and with the ultimate conclusion the Court draws from them. The Eleventh Amendment, in my view, clothes this interstate entity with immunity from suit in federal courts.
3 "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice . . . do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." U. S. Const. Preamble.
55
Page: Index Previous 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007