742
Opinion of the Court
Housing Administration v. Burr, 309 U. S. 242 (1940). In support of its holding in Burr the Court, in a passage often cited in later cases involving the waiver of sovereign immunity, wrote as follows:
"[I]t must be presumed that when Congress launched a governmental agency into the commercial world and endowed it with authority to 'sue or be sued,' that agency is not less amenable to judicial process than a private enterprise under like circumstances would be." Id., at 245.
This general proposition was cited in the first two cases in which the Court considered the extent of the waiver effected by the sue-and-be-sued clause of the PRA. In Franchise Tax Bd. of Cal. v. Postal Service, 467 U. S. 512 (1984), the underlying dispute concerned the obligation of the Postal Service to withhold unpaid state taxes from the wages of its employees. A unanimous Court held that the Postal Service was required to respond to an order to withhold the amounts, even though the process was a state administrative tax levy, not an order issued by a state court. Id., at 525. The sueand-be-sued clause, the Court held, must be given broad effect, and the Postal Service was required to respond to the administrative order even though it had not been issued by a judicial body. Id., at 519-521.
The second case in which the Court considered the scope of the waiver effected by the PRA's sue-and-be-sued clause was Loeffler v. Frank, 486 U. S. 549 (1988). After the Postal Service had been found liable for damages from employment discrimination in an action brought under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the question arose whether it was subject as well to prejudgment interest. Id., at 551. The Court allowed the interest, and in the course of its decision asserted, or repeated, formulations which indicate that the sue-and-be-sued clause effects a broad waiver of immunity.
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