Cite as: 528 U. S. 62 (2000)
Opinion of Stevens, J.
sectors of the labor market. Federal rules outlawing discrimination in the workplace, like the regulation of wages and hours or health and safety standards, may be enforced against public as well as private employers. In my opinion, Congress' power to authorize federal remedies against state agencies that violate federal statutory obligations is coextensive with its power to impose those obligations on the States in the first place. Neither the Eleventh Amendment nor the doctrine of sovereign immunity places any limit on that power. See Seminole Tribe of Fla. v. Florida, 517 U. S. 44, 165-168 (1996) (Souter, J., dissenting); EEOC v. Wyoming, 460 U. S. 226, 247-248 (1983) (Stevens, J., concurring).
The application of the ancient judge-made doctrine of sovereign immunity in cases like these is supposedly justified as a freestanding limit on congressional authority, a limit necessary to protect States' "dignity and respect" from impairment by the National Government. The Framers did not, however, select the Judicial Branch as the constitutional guardian of those state interests. Rather, the Framers designed important structural safeguards to ensure that when the National Government enacted substantive law (and provided for its enforcement), the normal operation of the legislative process itself would adequately defend state interests from undue infringement. See generally Wechsler, The Political Safeguards of Federalism: The Role of the States in the Composition and Selection of the National Government, 54 Colum. L. Rev. 543 (1954).
It is the Framers' compromise giving each State equal representation in the Senate that provides the principal structural protection for the sovereignty of the several States. The composition of the Senate was originally determined by the legislatures of the States, which would guarantee that their interests could not be ignored by Congress.1
1 The Federalist No. 45, p. 291 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961) (J. Madison) ("The State governments may be regarded as constituent and essential parts of the federal government . . . . The Senate will be elected absolutely and
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