744
Opinion of the Court
dence of the Constitution's meaning." Printz, 521 U. S., at 905 (internal quotation marks omitted). Although early Congresses enacted various statutes authorizing federal suits in state court, see id., at 906-907 (listing statutes); Testa v. Katt, 330 U. S. 386, 389-390 (1947), we have discovered no instance in which they purported to authorize suits against nonconsenting States in these fora. The "numerousness of these statutes [authorizing suit in state court], contrasted with the utter lack of statutes" subjecting States to suit, "suggests an assumed absence of such power." 521 U. S., at 907-908. It thus appears early Congresses did not believe they had the power to authorize private suits against the States in their own courts.
Not only were statutes purporting to authorize private suits against nonconsenting States in state courts not enacted by early Congresses; statutes purporting to authorize such suits in any forum are all but absent from our historical experience. The first statute we confronted that even arguably purported to subject the States to private actions was the FELA. See Parden, 377 U. S., at 187 ("Here, for the first time in this Court, a State's claim of immunity against suit by an individual meets a suit brought upon a cause of action expressly created by Congress"). As we later recognized, however, even this statute did not clearly create a cause of action against the States. See Welch, 483 U. S., at 476-478. The provisions of the FLSA at issue here, which were enacted in the aftermath of Parden, are among the first statutory enactments purporting in express terms to subject nonconsenting States to private suits. Although similar statutes have multiplied in the last generation, "they are of such recent vintage that they are no more probative than the [FLSA] of a constitutional tradition that lends meaning to the text. Their persuasive force is far outweighed by almost two centuries of apparent congressional avoidance of the practice." Printz, supra, at 918.
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