Cite as: 527 U. S. 666 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
York for damages caused by the State's engaging in such activity. Hans itself involved an action against Louisiana to recover coupons on a bond—the issuance of which surely rendered Louisiana a participant in the financial markets.
The "market participant" cases from our dormant Commerce Clause jurisprudence, relied upon by the United States, are inapposite. See, e. g., White v. Massachusetts Council of Constr. Employers, Inc., 460 U. S. 204 (1983); Reeves, Inc. v. Stake, 447 U. S. 429 (1980); and Hughes v. Alexandria Scrap Corp., 426 U. S. 794 (1976). Those cases hold that, where a State acts as a participant in the private market, it may prefer the goods or services of its own citizens, even though it could not do so while acting as a market regulator. Since "state proprietary activities may be, and often are, burdened with the same restrictions imposed on private market participants," "[e]venhandedness suggests that, when acting as proprietors, States should similarly share existing freedoms from federal constraints, including the inherent limits of the [dormant] Commerce Clause." White, supra, at 207-208, n. 3. The "market participant" exception to judicially created dormant Commerce Clause restrictions makes sense because the evil addressed by those restrictions—the prospect that States will use custom duties, exclusionary trade regulations, and other exercises of governmental power (as opposed to the expenditure of state resources) to favor their own citizens, see Hughes, supra, at 808—is entirely absent where the States are buying and selling in the market. In contrast, a suit by an individual against an unconsenting State is the very evil at which the Eleventh Amendment is directed—and it exists whether or not the State is acting for profit, in a traditionally "private" enterprise, and as a "market participant." In the sovereign-immunity context, moreover, "[e]venhandness" between individuals and States is not to be expected: "[T]he constitutional role of the States sets them apart from other
685
Page: Index Previous 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007