Cite as: 527 U. S. 666 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
"By empowering Congress to regulate commerce . . . the States necessarily surrendered any portion of their sovereignty that would stand in the way of such regulation. Since imposition of the FELA right of action upon interstate railroads is within the congressional regulatory power, it must follow that application of the Act to such a railroad cannot be precluded by sovereign immunity." 377 U. S., at 192.
See also id., at 193-194, n. 11. Our more recent decision in Seminole Tribe expressly repudiates that proposition, and in formally overruling Parden we do no more than make explicit what that case implied.
Recognizing a congressional power to exact constructive waivers of sovereign immunity through the exercise of Article I powers would also, as a practical matter, permit Congress to circumvent the antiabrogation holding of Seminole Tribe. Forced waiver and abrogation are not even different sides of the same coin—they are the same side of the same coin. "All congressional creations of private rights of action attach recovery to the defendant's commission of some act, or possession of some status, in a field where Congress has authority to regulate conduct. Thus, all federal prescriptions are, insofar as their prospective application is concerned, in a sense conditional, and—to the extent that the objects of the prescriptions consciously engage in the activity or hold the status that produces liability—can be redescribed as invitations to 'waiver.' " Pennsylvania v. Union Gas Co., 491 U. S. 1, 43 (1989) (Scalia, J., dissenting). See also Fitzpatrick, 427 U. S., at 451-452 (referring to congressional intent to "abrogate" state sovereign immunity as a "necessary predicate" for Parden-style waiver). There is little more than a verbal distinction between saying that Congress can make Florida liable to private parties for false or misleading advertising in interstate commerce of its pre-paid tuition program, and saying the same thing but adding
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