114
Souter, J., dissenting
private plaintiff for money damages. See, e. g., Commonwealth Edison Co. v. Montana, 453 U. S. 609 (1981); Minneapolis Star & Tribune Co. v. Minnesota Comm'r of Revenue, 460 U. S. 575 (1983). The best explanation for our practice belongs to Chief Justice Marshall: the Eleventh Amendment bars only those suits in which the sole basis for federal jurisdiction is diversity of citizenship. See Atascadero State Hospital v. Scanlon, 473 U. S., at 294 (Brennan, J., dissenting); Jackson, The Supreme Court, the Eleventh Amendment, and State Sovereign Immunity, 98 Yale L. J. 1, 44 (1988).
In sum, reading the Eleventh Amendment solely as a limit on citizen-state diversity jurisdiction has the virtue of coherence with this Court's practice, with the views of John Marshall, with the history of the Amendment's drafting, and with its allusive language. Today's majority does not appear to disagree, at least insofar as the constitutional text is concerned; the Court concedes, after all, that "the text of the Amendment would appear to restrict only the Article III diversity jurisdiction of the federal courts." Ante, at 54.11
Thus, regardless of which of the two plausible readings one adopts, the further point to note here is that there is no possible argument that the Eleventh Amendment, by its terms, deprives federal courts of jurisdiction over all citizen law-11 See also Pennsylvania v. Union Gas Co., 491 U. S., at 31 (Scalia, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) ("If this text [of the Eleventh Amendment] were intended as a comprehensive description of state sovereign immunity in federal courts . . . then it would unquestionably be most reasonable to interpret it as providing immunity only when the sole basis of federal jurisdiction is the diversity of citizenship that it describes (which of course tracks some of the diversity jurisdictional grants in U. S. Const., Art. III, § 2). For there is no plausible reason why one would wish to protect a State from being sued in federal court for violation of federal law . . . when the plaintiff is a citizen of another State or country, but to permit a State to be sued there when the plaintiff is citizen of the State itself").
Page: Index Previous 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007