Cite as: 540 U. S. 431 (2004)
Opinion of the Court
the decree is enforceable under Ex parte Young, and so we do not address the waiver argument.
This case involves the intersection of two areas of federal law: the reach of the Eleventh Amendment and the rules governing consent decrees. The Eleventh Amendment confirms the sovereign status of the States by shielding them from suits by individuals absent their consent. Seminole Tribe of Fla. v. Florida, 517 U. S. 44, 54 (1996). To ensure the enforcement of federal law, however, the Eleventh Amendment permits suits for prospective injunctive relief against state officials acting in violation of federal law. Ex parte Young, supra. This standard allows courts to order prospective relief, see Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U. S. 651 (1974); Milliken v. Bradley, 433 U. S. 267 (1977), as well as measures ancillary to appropriate prospective relief, Green v. Mansour, 474 U. S. 64, 71-73 (1985). Federal courts may not award retrospective relief, for instance, money damages or its equivalent, if the State invokes its immunity. Edelman, supra, at 668.
Consent decrees have elements of both contracts and judicial decrees. Firefighters v. Cleveland, 478 U. S. 501, 519 (1986). A consent decree "embodies an agreement of the parties" and is also "an agreement that the parties desire and expect will be reflected in, and be enforceable as, a judicial decree that is subject to the rules generally applicable to other judgments and decrees." Rufo v. Inmates of Suffolk County Jail, 502 U. S. 367, 378 (1992). Consent decrees entered in federal court must be directed to protecting federal interests. In Firefighters, we observed that a federal consent decree must spring from, and serve to resolve, a dispute within the court's subject-matter jurisdiction; must come within the general scope of the case made by the pleadings; and must further the objectives of the law upon which the complaint was based. 478 U. S., at 525.
This brings us to the intersection of the principles governing consent decrees and the Eleventh Amendment. As we
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