314
Souter, J., dissenting
Thus, it is hardly surprising that Ex parte Young itself gives no hint that the Court thought the relief sought in federal court was unavailable in the Minnesota state courts at the time. Young, indeed, relied on prior cases in which federal courts had entertained suits against state officers notwithstanding the fact, as the Young Court expressly noted, that state forums were available in which the plaintiffs could have vindicated the same claims. See 209 U. S., at 153-155 (citing Reagan v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co., 154 U. S. 362 (1894), and Smyth v. Ames, 169 U. S. 466 (1898)). Reagan, like Young, was a rate case, in which the plaintiffs sued the State's Railroad Commission and the State Attorney General in federal court, seeking to enjoin enforcement of the commission's rate order and any attempt by the State's Attorney General to recover penalties for its violation. Federal jurisdiction was exercised, even though a state statute authorized suit against the commission in state court. While it is true, as the principal opinion notes, see ante, at 274, that the opinion in Reagan reflects the then-prevalent view that state consent to suit in a state forum amounted to consent in the federal forum, see Reagan, supra, at 392; contra, Smith v. Reeves, 178 U. S. 436, 441 (1900) (rejecting that view), the Reagan Court permitted the suit to proceed in federal court not on the ground that the state statute authorized a state suit but regardless of that point. The Court viewed the case as one to enjoin state officers from enforcing a state statute in violation of federal law, remarking that it "cannot . . . in any fair sense be considered a suit against the State." 154 U. S., at 392. Likewise, in Smyth, the historic rate case, a state statute authorized suit in state court to
for often the states themselves were the primary violators of tribal land rights"); Clinton & Hotopp, Judicial Enforcement of the Federal Restraints on Alienation of Indian Land: The Origins of the Eastern Land Claims, 31 Me. L. Rev. 17, 42-49 (1979) (describing the history of state evasions of the federal statutory restraint on alienations of Indian land and the federal response).
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