312
Souter, J., dissenting
Amendment doctrine to probably every case decided under Ex parte Young, including the original. The exercise of Young jurisdiction for vindicating individual federal rights is necessarily "intrusive," simply because state officials sued under Young are almost always doing exactly what their States' legislative and administrative authorities intend them to do. The state officers in Treasure Salvors were expected to secure 25 percent of the treasure salvaged from a sunken galleon for the State of Florida; an order to bring the treasure before a federal court in admiralty was nothing if not a threat to the State's expectations and intrusive into its affairs. See 458 U. S., at 678-679, 694 (opinion of Stevens, J.). So was the injunction requiring the issuance of welfare benefits within federally mandated time limits in Edelman, see 415 U. S., at 656-659; and the order to get out of Arlington Cemetery in Lee, see 106 U. S., at 197, 220-221; and the order barring enforcement of a rail rate regulation in Young itself, see 209 U. S., at 132; and any order granting relief in any federal habeas case, see, e. g., Brennan v. Stewart, 834 F. 2d 1248, 1252, n. 6 (CA5 1988). If intrusiveness were to be a limitation on Young, the limitation would be terminal.10
C
A third reason proposed by the principal opinion in support of today's result is the supposedly supplemental character of federal-question jurisdiction under Young, subject to giving way whenever the private plaintiff would have entree
10 Under existing statutes it would not be even a partial answer to say that Congress has the power under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to abrogate state sovereign immunity, as to cases within the subject matter covered by the state habeas statute, 28 U. S. C. § 2254, and Rev. Stat. § 1979, 42 U. S. C. § 1983; habeas claims are directed to state officers, see 28 U. S. C. § 2243; States are not persons subject to suit under § 1983, see Will v. Michigan Dept. of State Police, 491 U. S. 58, 71 (1989); and in neither instance could Congress be said to have intended to abrogate an immunity arising under the Eleventh Amendment.
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