736
Opinion of the Court
the Eleventh Amendment. As we have explained, however, the bare text of the Amendment is not an exhaustive description of the States' constitutional immunity from suit. The cases, furthermore, do not decide the question presented here—whether the States retain immunity from private suits in their own courts notwithstanding an attempted abrogation by the Congress.
Two of the cases discussing state-court immunity may be dismissed out of hand. The footnote digressions in Atascadero State Hospital and Thiboutot were irrelevant to either opinion's holding or rationale. The discussion in Will was also unnecessary to the decision; our holding that 42 U. S. C. § 1983 did not create a cause of action against the States rendered it unnecessary to determine the scope of the States' constitutional immunity from suit in their own courts. Our opinions in Hilton and Hall, however, require closer attention, for in those cases we sustained suits against States in state courts.
In Hilton we held that an injured employee of a state-owned railroad could sue his employer (an arm of the State) in state court under the Federal Employers' Liability Act (FELA), 53 Stat. 1404, 45 U. S. C. §§ 51-60. Our decision was "controlled and informed" by stare decisis. 502 U. S., at 201. A generation earlier we had held that because the FELA made clear that all who operated railroads would be subject to suit by injured workers, States that chose to enter the railroad business after the statute's enactment impliedly waived their sovereign immunity from such suits. See Parden v. Terminal R. Co. of Ala. Docks Dept., 377 U. S. 184 (1964). Some States had excluded railroad workers from the coverage of their workers' compensation statutes on the assumption that the FELA provided adequate protection for those workers. Hilton, 502 U. S., at 202. Closing the courts to FELA suits against state employers would have dislodged settled expectations and required an extensive legislative response. Ibid.
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