Cite as: 527 U. S. 706 (1999)
Souter, J., dissenting
system was exempt from the FLSA. 469 U. S., at 534, 536. In holding that it was not, the Court overruled National League of Cities, see 469 U. S., at 557, this time taking the position that Congress was not barred by the Constitution from binding the States as employers under the Commerce Clause, id., at 554. As already mentioned, the Court held that whatever protection the Constitution afforded to the States' sovereignty lay in the constitutional structure, not in some substantive guarantee. Ibid.39 Garcia remains good law, its reasoning has not been repudiated, and it has not been challenged here.
The FLSA has not, however, fared as well in practice as it has in theory. The Court in Seminole Tribe created a significant impediment to the statute's practical application by rendering its damages provisions unenforceable against the States by private suit in federal court. Today's decision blocking private actions in state courts makes the barrier to individual enforcement a total one.
39 Garcia demonstrates that, contra the Court's suggestion, the FLSA does not impermissibly act upon the States, see ante, at 714. Rather, the FLSA, enacted lawfully pursuant to the commerce power, treats the States like other employers. The Court seems to have misunderstood Hamilton's statement in The Federalist No. 15 that the citizens are " ' "the only proper objects of government," ' " ante, at 714 (quoting Printz v. United States, 521 U. S. 898, 919-920 (1997)). Hamilton's point is not, as the Court seems to think, that the National Government should dictate nothing to the States in order to protect their residual sovereignty. To the contrary, Hamilton, who was arguing against the extreme respect for state sovereignty in the Articles of Confederation, meant precisely that the National Government should not act as the leader of a "league," The Federalist No. 15, p. 95 (J. Cooke ed. 1961), mediating among several sovereignties, but as a "national government," ibid., with power to produce obedience through the "COER[C]ION of the magistracy," ibid. Hamilton is therefore the wrong person to quote for the proposition that the National Government may not act upon the States, since his point was that the National Government should not be limited to acting through the medium of the States.
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