96
Opinion of Stevens, J.
Federalism concerns do make it appropriate for Congress to speak clearly when it regulates state action. But when it does so, as it has in these cases,5 we can safely presume that the burdens the statute imposes on the sovereignty of the several States were taken into account during the deliberative process leading to the enactment of the measure. Those burdens necessarily include the cost of defending against enforcement proceedings and paying whatever penalties might be incurred for violating the statute. In my judgment, the question whether those enforcement proceedings should be conducted exclusively by federal agencies, or may be brought by private parties as well, is a matter of policy for Congress to decide. In either event, once Congress has made its policy choice, the sovereignty concerns of the several States are satisfied, and the federal interest in evenhanded enforcement of federal law, explicitly endorsed in Article VI of the Constitution, does not countenance further limitations. There is not a word in the text of the Constitution supporting the Court's conclusion that the judge-made doctrine of sovereign immunity limits Congress' power to authorize private parties, as well as federal agencies, to enforce federal law against the States. The importance of respecting the Framers' decision to assign the business of lawmaking to the Congress dictates firm resistance to the present majority's repeated substitution of its own views of federalism for those expressed in statutes enacted by the Congress and signed by the President.
stitutional command. See Seminole Tribe of Fla. v. Florida, 517 U. S. 44, 166-167 (1996) (Souter, J., dissenting). But in those instances, courts are not crafting wholly judge-made doctrines unrelated to any constitutional text, nor are they doing so solely under the guise of the necessity of safeguarding state interests.
5 Because Congress has clearly expressed its intention to subject States to suits by private parties under the ADEA, I join Part III of the opinion of the Court.
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