Cite as: 521 U. S. 261 (1997)
Souter, J., dissenting
Cf. Martinez v. California, 444 U. S. 277, 284 (1980) (state immunity statute cannot immunize an officer from a § 1983 suit in state court). The consequence is that in every case in which Ex parte Young supports the exercise of federal-question jurisdiction against a state officer, General Oil prohibits the declination of state jurisdiction over the same officer on state immunity grounds. Insofar as state-court jurisdiction would count against Ex parte Young in one case,15 it would presumably count against it as heavily in every case.
whether the suit is one against the state . . . . Because a state cannot authorize its officers to behave unconstitutionally, official action pursuant to an invalid state law cannot be protected by sovereign immunity; and a state court cannot decline to exercise jurisdiction on this basis") (quoting General Oil, supra, at 226); Monaghan, Third Party Standing, 84 Colum. L. Rev. 277, 294, n. 97 (1984) ("[I]f prospective relief is a necessary concomitant of a federal right, availability of such relief in federal courts may not free the states from an obligation to provide it as well").
Nor was General Oil overruled or otherwise "abandoned" by Georgia R. R. & Banking Co. v. Musgrove, 335 U. S. 900 (1949), in which the Court dismissed an appeal from a decision of the Supreme Court of Georgia holding that state sovereign immunity barred suits asserting constitutional claims against state officials. Cf. 16B C. Wright, A. Miller, & E. Cooper, Federal Practice and Procedure § 4024, pp. 363-364 (2d ed. 1996). The one-paragraph per curiam dismissal in Musgrove stated that an adequate nonfederal ground supported the state court's decision but did not identify the state ground involved; the posture of the case suggests that the Court may have viewed the lower court's decision as based on a valid state law regarding the timing and not the existence of state remedies. See Fallon, supra, at 1211, n. 317.
Finally, insofar as General Oil may be read to require that States provide some adequate judicial remedy to redress acts of state officials that violate federal law, see, e. g., Collins, Article III Cases, State Court Duties, and the Madisonian Compromise, 1995 Wis. L. Rev. 39, 164, n. 359, but not necessarily injunctive relief in particular, its relevance for our purposes remains the same, that is, that every litigant seeking prospective relief in federal court under Young may obtain some adequate redress in state court as well.
15 Quite apart even from what General Oil may mandate, it appears that in all 50 States, as a matter of course, private plaintiffs may obtain declaratory and injunctive relief in state court for the acts of state officials in
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