College Savings Bank v. Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd., 527 U.S. 666, 19 (1999)

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684

COLLEGE SAVINGS BANK v. FLORIDA PREPAID POSTSECONDARY ED. EXPENSE BD.

Opinion of the Court

at the end "if Florida chooses to engage in such advertising." As further evidence that constructive waiver is little more than abrogation under another name, consider the revealing facts of this case: The statutory provision relied upon to demonstrate that Florida constructively waived its sovereign immunity is the very same provision that purported to abrogate it.

Nor do we think that the constitutionally grounded principle of state sovereign immunity is any less robust where, as here, the asserted basis for constructive waiver is conduct that the State realistically could choose to abandon, that is undertaken for profit, that is traditionally performed by private citizens and corporations, and that otherwise resembles the behavior of "market participants." Permitting abrogation or constructive waiver of the constitutional right only when these conditions exist would of course limit the evil— but it is hard to say that that limitation has any more support in text or tradition than, say, limiting abrogation or constructive waiver to the last Friday of the month. Since sovereign immunity itself was not traditionally limited by these factors, and since they have no bearing upon the voluntariness of the waiver, there is no principled reason why they should enter into our waiver analysis. When we held in Seminole Tribe that sovereign immunity barred an action brought under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act against the State of Florida for its alleged failure to negotiate a gambling compact with the Seminole Tribe of Indians, we did not pause to consider whether Florida's decision not to negotiate was somehow involuntary. Nor did we pause to consider whether running a tugboat towing service at "fair and reasonable rates" was for profit, was traditionally performed by private citizens and corporations, and otherwise resembled the behavior of "market participants" when we held, in Ex parte New York, 256 U. S. 490 (1921), that sovereign immunity foreclosed an admiralty action against the State of New

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