Cite as: 540 U. S. 431 (2004)
Opinion of the Court
officials lacked the authority to agree to remedies beyond the scope of Ex parte Young absent a waiver, as petitioners concede. Tr. of Oral Arg. 12. We can assume, moreover, that the state officials could not enter into a consent decree failing to satisfy the general requirements of consent decrees outlined in Firefighters. Petitioners' motion to enforce, however, sought enforcement of a remedy consistent with Ex parte Young and Firefighters, a remedy the state officials themselves had accepted when they asked the District Court to approve the decree. Enforcing the agreement does not violate the Eleventh Amendment.
The theory advanced by the state officials relies heavily on our decision in Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman, 465 U. S. 89 (1984). Pennhurst is distinguishable. In that case we found the rationale of Ex parte Young inapplicable to suits brought against state officials alleging violations of state law. 465 U. S., at 106. Jurisdiction was improper because "[a] federal court's grant of relief against state officials on the basis of state law, whether prospective or retroactive, does not vindicate the supreme authority of federal law." Ibid. Here, by contrast, the order to be enforced is a federal decree entered to implement a federal statute. The decree does implement the Medicaid statute in a highly detailed way, requiring the state officials to take some steps that the statute does not specifically require. The same could be said, however, of any effort to implement the general EPSDT statute in a particular way. The decree reflects a choice among various ways that a State could implement the Medicaid Act. As a result, enforcing the decree vindicates an agreement that the state officials reached to comply with federal law.
Hutto v. Finney, 437 U. S. 678 (1978), is instructive on this point. In Finney, the Court upheld a District Court's award of attorney's fees designed to encourage state compliance with an existing court order. State prisoners had sued state prison officials claiming that the conditions of their confine-
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