Cite as: 517 U. S. 44 (1996)
Opinion of the Court
J., dissenting) (quoting Ex parte New York, 256 U. S. 490, 497 (1921)); see also cases cited at n. 7, supra. As the dissent in Union Gas recognized, the plurality's conclusion—that Congress could under Article I expand the scope of the federal courts' jurisdiction under Article III—"contradict[ed] our unvarying approach to Article III as setting forth the exclusive catalog of permissible federal-court jurisdiction." Union Gas, supra, at 39.
Never before the decision in Union Gas had we suggested that the bounds of Article III could be expanded by Congress operating pursuant to any constitutional provision other than the Fourteenth Amendment. Indeed, it had seemed fundamental that Congress could not expand the jurisdiction of the federal courts beyond the bounds of Article III. Mar-bury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137 (1803). The plurality's citation of prior decisions for support was based upon what we believe to be a misreading of precedent. See Union Gas, 491 U. S., at 40-41 (Scalia, J., dissenting). The plurality claimed support for its decision from a case holding the unre-markable, and completely unrelated, proposition that the States may waive their sovereign immunity, see id., at 14-15 (citing Parden v. Terminal Railway of Ala. Docks Dept., 377 U. S. 184 (1964)), and cited as precedent propositions that had been merely assumed for the sake of argument in earlier cases, see 491 U. S., at 15 (citing Welch v. Texas Dept. of Highways and Public Transp., 483 U. S., at 475-476, and n. 5, and County of Oneida v. Oneida Indian Nation of N. Y., 470 U. S., at 252).
The plurality's extended reliance upon our decision in Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, 427 U. S. 445 (1976), that Congress could under the Fourteenth Amendment abrogate the States' sovereign immunity was also, we believe, misplaced. Fitzpatrick was based upon a rationale wholly inapplicable to the Interstate Commerce Clause, viz., that the Fourteenth Amendment, adopted well after the adoption of the Eleventh Amendment and the ratification of the Constitution, oper-
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