746
Opinion of the Court
R. Co., 109 U. S. 446, 451 (1883) ("It may be accepted as a point of departure unquestioned, that neither a State nor the United States can be sued as defendant in any court in this country without their consent, except in the limited class of cases in which a State may be made a party in the Supreme Court of the United States by virtue of the original jurisdiction conferred on this court by the Constitution"); Louisiana ex rel. New York Guaranty & Indemnity Co. v. Steele, 134 U. S. 230, 232 (1890) (finding a suit against a state official in state court to be "clearly within the principle" of the Eleventh Amendment decisions); Hess v. Port Authority Trans-Hudson Corporation, 513 U. S. 30, 39 (1994) ("The Eleventh Amendment largely shields States from suit in federal court without their consent, leaving parties with claims against a State to present them, if the State permits, in the State's own tribunals"); Seminole Tribe, 517 U. S., at 71, n. 14 ("[T]his Court is empowered to review a question of federal law arising from a state-court decision where a State has consented to suit"); see also Great Northern Life Ins. Co. v. Read, 322 U. S., at 59 (Frankfurter, J., dissenting) ("The Eleventh Amendment has put state immunity from suit into the Constitution. Therefore, it is not in the power of individuals to bring any State into court—the State's or that of the United States—except with its consent"); accord, id., at 51, 53 (majority opinion); cf. Quern v. Jordan, 440 U. S. 332, 340 (1979); Green v. Mansour, 474 U. S. 64, 71 (1985).
We have also relied on the States' immunity in their own courts as a premise in our Eleventh Amendment rulings. See Hans, 134 U. S., at 10 ("It is true the amendment does so read, and, if there were no other reason or ground for abating his suit, it might be maintainable; and then we should have this anomalous result [that a State may be sued by its own citizen though not by the citizen of another State, and that a State] may be thus sued in the federal courts, although not allowing itself to be sued in its own courts. If this is the necessary consequence of the language of the Con-
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