180
Souter, J., dissenting
tended. Since the Court rests this inference in large part on its erroneous assumption that the statute's procedural limitations would not be applied in a suit against an officer for which Young provided the jurisdictional basis, the error of that assumption is enough to show the unsoundness of any inference that Congress meant to exclude Young's application. But there are further reasons pointing to the utter implausibility of the Court's reading of the congressional mind.
IGRA's jurisdictional provision reads as though it had been drafted with the specific intent to apply to officer liability under Young. It provides that "[t]he United States district courts shall have jurisdiction over . . . any cause of action . . . arising from the failure of a State to enter into negotiations . . . or to conduct such negotiations in good faith." 25 U. S. C. § 2710(d)(7)(A)(i) (emphasis added). This language does not limit the possible defendants to States and is quite literally consistent with the possibility that a tribe could sue an appropriate state official for a State's failure to negotiate.64 The door is so obviously just as open to jurisdiction over an officer under Young as to jurisdiction over a State directly that it is difficult to see why the statute would have been drafted as it was unless it was done in anticipation that Young might well be the jurisdictional basis for enforcement action.
But even if the jurisdictional provision had spoken narrowly of an action against the State itself (as it subsequently speaks in terms of the State's obligation), that would be no indication that Congress had rejected the application of Young. An order requiring a "State" to comply with federal
64 In order for any person (whether individual or entity) to be a proper defendant under § 2710(d)(7) (and in order for standing to exist, since one of its requirements is redressability), that person, of course, would need to have some connection to the State's negotiations. See Young, 209 U. S., at 157; Franklin v. Massachusetts, 505 U. S. 788, 803 (1992). The obvious candidates are the responsible state officials.
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