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SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________
No. 17–1299
_________________
FRANCHISE TAX BOARD OF CALIFORNIA, PETITIONER
v. GILBERT P. HYATT
on writ of certiorari to the supreme court of
nevada
[May 13, 2019]
Justice Thomas delivered the opinion of the
Court.
This case, now before us for the third time,
requires us to decide whether the Constitution permits a State to
be sued by a private party without its consent in the courts of a
different State. We hold that it does not and overrule our decision
to the contrary in
Nevada v.
Hall,
440 U.S.
410 (1979).
I
In the early 1990s, respondent Gilbert Hyatt
earned substantial income from a technology patent for a com- puter
formed on a single integrated circuit chip. Although Hyatt’s claim
was later canceled, see
Hyatt v.
Boone,
146 F.3d 1348 (CA Fed. 1998), his royalties in the interim
totaled millions of dollars. Prior to receiving the patent, Hyatt
had been a long-time resident of California. But in 1991, Hyatt
sold his house in California and rented an apartment, registered to
vote, obtained insurance, opened a bank account, and acquired a
driver’s license in Nevada. When he filed his 1991 and 1992 tax
returns, he claimed Nevada—which collects no personal income tax,
see Nev. Const., Art. 10, §1(9)—as his primary place of
residence.
Petitioner Franchise Tax Board of California
(Board), the state agency responsible for assessing personal income
tax, suspected that Hyatt’s move was a sham. Thus, in 1993, the
Board launched an audit to determine whether Hyatt underpaid his
1991 and 1992 state income taxes by misrepresenting his residency.
In the course of the audit, employees of the Board traveled to
Nevada to conduct interviews with Hyatt’s estranged family members
and shared his personal information with business contacts. In
total, the Board sent more than 100 letters and demands for
information to third parties. The Board ultimately concluded that
Hyatt had not moved to Nevada until April 1992 and owed California
more than $10 million in back taxes, interest, and penalties. Hyatt
protested the audit before the Board, which upheld the audit after
an 11-year administrative proceeding. The appeal of that decision
remains pending before the California Office of Tax Appeals.
In 1998, Hyatt sued the Board in Nevada state
court for torts he alleged the agency committed during the audit.
After the trial court denied in part the Board’s motion for summary
judgment, the Board petitioned the Nevada Supreme Court for a writ
of mandamus ordering dismissal on the ground that the State of
California was immune from suit. The Board argued that, under the
Full Faith and Credit Clause, Nevada courts must apply California’s
statute immunizing the Board from liability for all injuries caused
by its tax collection. See U. S. Const., Art. IV, §1;
Cal. Govt. Code Ann. §860.2 (West 1995). The Nevada Supreme Court
rejected that argument and held that, under general principles of
comity, the Board was entitled to the same immunity that Nevada law
afforded Nevada agencies—that is, immunity for negligent but not
intentional torts. We granted certiorari and unanimously affirmed,
holding that the Full Faith and Credit Clause did not prohibit
Nevada from applying its own immunity law to the case.
Franchise
Tax Bd. of Cal. v.
Hyatt,
538 U.S.
488, 498–499 (2003) (
Hyatt I). Because the Board did not
ask us to overrule
Nevada v.
Hall,
supra, we
did not revisit that decision.
Hyatt I, supra, at 497.
On remand, the trial court conducted a 4-month
jury trial that culminated in a verdict for Hyatt that, with
prejudgment interest and costs, exceeded $490 million. On appeal,
the Nevada Supreme Court rejected most of the damages awarded by
the lower court, upholding only a $1 million judgment on one of
Hyatt’s claims and remanding for a new damages trial on another.
Although the court recognized that tort liability for Nevada state
agencies was capped at $50,000 under state law, it nonetheless held
that Nevada public policy precluded it from applying that
limitation to the California agency in this case. We again granted
certiorari and this time reversed, holding that the Full Faith and
Credit Clause required Nevada courts to grant the Board the same
immunity that Nevada agencies enjoy.
Franchise Tax Bd. of
Cal. v.
Hyatt, 578 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2016) (slip
op., at 4–9) (
Hyatt II ). Although the question
was briefed and argued, the Court was equally divided on whether to
overrule
Hall and thus affirmed the jurisdiction of the
Nevada Supreme Court.
Hyatt II, supra, at ___ (slip op., at
1). On remand, the Nevada Supreme Court instructed the trial court
to enter damages in accordance with the statutory cap for Nevada
agencies. 133 Nev. ___, 407 P.3d 717 (2017).
We granted, for a third time, the Board’s
petition for certiorari, 585 U. S. ___ (2018). The sole
question presented is whether
Nevada v.
Hall should
be overruled.[
1]
II
Nevada v.
Hall is contrary to
our constitutional design and the understanding of sovereign
immunity shared by the States that ratified the Constitution.
Stare decisis does not compel continued adherence to this
erroneous precedent. We therefore overrule
Hall and hold
that States retain their sovereign immunity from private suits
brought in the courts of other States.
A
Hall held that the Constitution does
not bar private suits against a State in the courts of another
State. 440 U. S., at 416–421. The opinion conceded that States
were immune from such actions at the time of the founding, but it
nonetheless concluded that nothing “implicit in the Constitution”
requires States “to adhere to the sovereign-immunity doctrine as it
prevailed when the Constitution was adopted.”
Id., at
417–418, 424–427. Instead, the Court concluded that the Founders
assumed that “prevailing notions of comity would provide adequate
protection against the unlikely prospect of an attempt by the
courts of one State to assert jurisdiction over another.”
Id., at 419. The Court’s view rested primarily on the idea
that the States maintained sovereign immunity vis-à-vis each other
in the same way that foreign nations do, meaning that immunity is
available only if the forum State “voluntar[ily]” decides “to
respect the dignity of the [defendant State] as a matter of
comity.”
Id., at 416; see also
id., at 424–427.
The
Hall majority was unpersuaded that
the Constitution implicitly altered the relationship between the
States. In the Court’s view, the ratification debates, the Eleventh
Amendment, and our sovereign-immunity precedents did not bear on
the question because they “concerned questions of federal-court
jurisdiction.”
Id., at 420. The Court also found
unpersuasive the fact that the Constitution delineates several
limitations on States’ authority, such as Article I powers granted
exclusively to Congress and Article IV requirements imposed on
States.
Id., at 425. Despite acknowledging “that ours is not
a union of 50 wholly independent sovereigns,”
Hall inferred
from the lack of an express sovereign immunity granted to the
States and from the Tenth Amendment that the States retained the
power in their own courts to deny immunity to other States.
Ibid.
Chief Justice Burger, Justice Blackmun, and
Justice Rehnquist dissented.
B
Hall’s determination that the
Constitution does not contemplate sovereign immunity for each State
in a sister State’s courts misreads the historical record and
misapprehends the “implicit ordering of relationships within the
federal system necessary to make the Constitution a workable
governing charter and to give each provision within that document
the full effect intended by the Framers.”
Id., at 433
(Rehnquist, J., dissenting). As Chief Justice Marshall explained,
the Founders did not state every postulate on which they formed our
Republic—“we must never forget, that it is
a constitution we
are expounding.”
McCulloch v.
Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316,
407 (1819). And although the Constitution assumes that the States
retain their sovereign immunity except as otherwise provided, it
also fundamentally adjusts the States’ relationship with each other
and curtails their ability, as sovereigns, to decline to recognize
each other’s immunity.
1
After independence, the States considered
themselves fully sovereign nations. As the Colonies proclaimed in
1776, they were “Free and Independent States” with “full Power to
levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce,
and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of
right do.” Declaration of Independence ¶4. Under international law,
then, independence “entitled” the Colonies “to all the rights and
powers of sovereign states.”
McIlvaine v.
Coxe’s
Lessee, 4 Cranch 209, 212 (1808).
“An integral component” of the States’
sovereignty was “their immunity from private suits.”
Federal
Maritime Comm’n v.
South Carolina Ports Authority,
535 U.S.
743, 751–752 (2002); see
Alden v.
Maine,
527 U.S.
706, 713 (1999) (“[A]s the Constitution’s structure, its
history, and the authoritative interpretations by this Court make
clear, the States’ immunity from suit is a fundamental aspect of
the sovereignty which the States enjoyed before the ratification of
the Constitution, and which they retain
today . . . ”). This fundamental aspect of the
States’ “inviolable sovereignty” was well established and widely
accepted at the founding. The Federalist No. 39, p. 245 (C.
Rossiter ed. 1961) (J. Madison); see
Alden,
supra, at
715–716 (“[T]he doctrine that a sovereign could not be sued without
its consent was universal in the States when the Constitution was
drafted and ratified”). As Alexander Hamilton explained:
“It is inherent in the nature of
sovereignty not to be amenable to the suit of an individual without
its consent. This is the general sense and the general practice of
mankind; and the exemption, as one of the attributes of
sovereignty, is now enjoyed by the government of every State in the
Union.” The Federalist No. 81, at 487 (emphasis deleted).
The Founders believed that both “common law
sovereign immunity” and “law-of-nations sovereign immunity”
prevented States from being amenable to process in any court
without their consent. See Pfander, Rethinking the Supreme Court’s
Original Jurisdiction in State-Party Cases, 82 Cal. L. Rev. 555,
581–588 (1994); see also Nelson, Sovereign Immunity as a Doctrine
of Personal Jurisdiction, 115 Harv. L. Rev. 1559, 1574–1579
(2002). The common-law rule was that “no suit or action can be
brought against the king, even in civil matters, because no court
can have jurisdiction over him.” 1 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on
the Laws of England 235 (1765) (Blackstone). The law-of-nations
rule followed from the “perfect equality and absolute independence
of sovereigns” under that body of international law.
Schooner
Exchange v.
McFaddon, 7 Cranch 116, 137 (1812); see C.
Phillipson, Wheaton’s Elements of International Law 261 (5th ed.
1916) (recognizing that sovereigns “enjoy equality before
international law”); 1 J. Kent, Commentaries on American Law 20 (G.
Comstock ed. 1867). According to the founding era’s foremost expert
on the law of nations, “[i]t does not . . . belong to any
foreign power to take cognisance of the administration of [another]
sovereign, to set himself up for a judge of his conduct, and to
oblige him to alter it.” 2 E. de Vattel, The Law of Nations §55, p.
155 (J. Chitty ed. 1883). The sovereign is “exemp[t]
. . . from all [foreign] jurisdiction.” 4
id.,
§108, at 486.
The founding generation thus took as given that
States could not be haled involuntarily before each other’s courts.
See Woolhandler, Interstate Sovereign Immunity, 2006 S. Ct.
Rev. 249, 254–259. This understanding is perhaps best illustrated
by preratification examples. In 1781, a creditor named Simon Nathan
tried to recover a debt that Virginia allegedly owed him by
attaching some of its property in Philadelphia. James Madison and
other Virginia delegates to the Confederation Congress responded by
sending a communique to Pennsylvania requesting that its executive
branch have the action dismissed. See Letter from Virginia
Delegates to Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania (July 9,
1781), in 3 The Papers of James Madison, 184–185 (W. Hutchinson
& W. Rachal eds. 1963). As Madison framed it, the
Commonwealth’s property could not be attached by process issuing
from a court of “any other State in the Union.”
Id., at 184.
To permit otherwise would require Virginia to “abandon its
Sovereignty by descending to answer before the Tribunal of another
Power.”
Ibid. Pennsylvania Attorney General William Bradford
intervened, urging the Court of Common Pleas to dismiss the action.
See
Nathan v.
Virginia, 1 Dall. 77, 78 (C. P. Phila.
Cty. 1781). According to Bradford, the suit violated international
law because “all sovereigns are in a state of equality and
independence, exempt from each other’s jurisdiction.”
Ibid.
“[A]ll jurisdiction implies superiority over the party,” Bradford
argued, “but there could be no superiority” between the States, and
thus no jurisdiction, because the States were “perfect[ ly]
equa[l]” and “entire[ly] independen[t].”
Ibid. The court
agreed and refused to grant Nathan the writ of attachment.
Id., at 80.
Similarly, a Pennsylvania Admiralty Court that
very same year dismissed a libel action against a South Caro- lina
warship, brought by its crew to recover unpaid wages. The court
reasoned that the vessel was owned by a “sovereign independent
state.”
Moitez v.
The South Carolina, 17 F. Cas. 574
(No. 9697) (1781).
The Founders were well aware of the
international-law immunity principles behind these cases.
Federalists and Antifederalists alike agreed in their
preratification debates that States could not be sued in the courts
of other States. One Federalist, who argued that Article III would
waive the States’ immunity in federal court, admitted that the
waiver was desirable because of the “impossibility of calling a
sovereign state before the jurisdiction of another sovereign
state.” 3 Debates on the Constitution 549 (J. Elliot ed. 1876)
(Pendleton) (Elliot’s Debates). Two of the most prominent
Antifederalists—Federal Farmer and Brutus—disagreed with the
Federalists about the desir- ability of a federal forum in which
States could be sued, but did so for the very reason that the
States had previously been “subject to no such actions” in any
court and were not “oblige[d]” “to answer to an individual in a
court of law.” Federal Farmer No. 3 (Oct. 10, 1787), in 4 The
Founders’ Constitution 227 (P. Kurland & R. Lerner eds. 1987).
They found it “humiliating and degrading” that a State might have
to answer “the suit of an individual.” Brutus No. 13 (Feb. 21,
1788), in
id., at 238.
In short, at the time of the founding, it was
well settled that States were immune under both the common law and
the law of nations. The Constitution’s use of the term “States”
reflects both of these kinds of traditional immu- nity. And the
States retained these aspects of sovereignty, “except as altered by
the plan of the Convention or certain constitutional Amendments.”
Alden, 527 U. S., at 713.
2
One constitutional provision that abrogated
certain aspects of this traditional immunity was Article III, which
provided a neutral federal forum in which the States agreed to be
amenable to suits brought by other States. Art. III, §2; see
Alden,
supra, at 755. “The establishment of a
permanent tribunal with adequate authority to determine
controversies between the States, in place of an inadequate scheme
of arbitration, was essential to the peace of the Union.”
Principality of Monaco v.
Mississippi,
292
U.S. 313, 328 (1934). As James Madison explained during the
Convention debates, “there can be no impropriety in referring such
disputes” between coequal sovereigns to a superior tribunal.
Elliot’s Debates 532.
The States, in ratifying the Constitution,
similarly surrendered a portion of their immunity by consenting to
suits brought against them by the United States in federal courts.
See
Monaco,
supra, at 328;
Federal Maritime
Comm’n, 535 U. S., at 752. “While that jurisdiction is not
conferred by the Constitution in express words, it is inherent in
the constitutional plan.”
Monaco,
supra, at 329.
Given that “all jurisdiction implies superiority of power,”
Blackstone 235, the only forums in which the States have consented
to suits by one another and by the Federal Government are Article
III courts. See
Federal Maritime Comm’n,
supra, at
752.
The Antifederalists worried that Article III
went even further by extending the federal judicial power over
controversies “between a State and Citizens of another State.” They
suggested that this provision implicitly waived the States’
sovereign immunity against
private suits in federal courts.
But “[t]he leading advocates of the Constitution assured the people
in no uncertain terms” that this reading was incorrect.
Alden, 527 U. S., at 716; see
id., at 716–718
(citing arguments by Hamilton, Madison, and John Marshall).
According to Madison:
“[A federal court’s] jurisdiction in
controversies between a state and citizens of another state is much
objected to, and perhaps without reason. It is not in the power of
individuals to call any state into court. The only operation it can
have, is that, if a state should wish to bring a suit against a
citizen, it must be brought before the federal court. This will
give satisfaction to individuals, as it will prevent citizens, on
whom a state may have a claim, being dissatisfied with the state
courts.” Elliot’s Debates 533.
John Marshall echoed these sentiments:
“With respect to disputes between
a
state and the citizens of another state, its jurisdiction has
been decried with unusual vehemence. I hope no gentleman will think
that a state will be called at the bar of the federal court.
. . . The intent is, to enable states to re- cover claims
of individuals residing in other states. I contend this
construction is warranted by the words.”
Id., at 555
(emphasis in original).
Not long after the founding, however, the
Antifederalists’ fears were realized. In
Chisholm v.
Georgia, 2 Dall. 419 (1793), the Court held that Article III
allowed the very suits that the “Madison-Marshall-Hamilton
triumvirate” insisted it did not.
Hall, 440 U. S., at
437 (Rehnquist, J., dissenting). That decision precipitated an
immediate “furor” and “uproar” across the country. 1 J. Goebel,
Antecedents and Beginnings to 1801, History of the Supreme Court of
the United States 734, 737 (1971); see
id., at 734–741.
Congress and the States accordingly acted swiftly to remedy the
Court’s blunder by drafting and ratifying the Eleventh
Amendment.[
2] See
Edelman v.
Jordan,
415 U.S.
651, 660–662 (1974); see also
Federal Maritime Comm’n,
supra, at 753 (acknowledging that
Chisholm was
incorrect);
Alden,
supra, at 721–722 (same).
The Eleventh Amendment confirmed that the
Constitution was not meant to “rais[e] up” any suits against the
States that were “anomalous and unheard of when the Constitution
was adopted.”
Hans v.
Louisiana,
134 U.S.
1, 18 (1890). Although the terms of that Amendment address only
“the specific provisions of the Constitution that had raised
concerns during the ratification debates and formed the basis of
the
Chisholm decision,” the “natural inference” from its
speedy adoption is that “the Constitution was understood, in light
of its history and structure, to preserve the States’ traditional
immunity from private suits.”
Alden,
supra, at
723–724. We have often emphasized that “[t]he Amendment is rooted
in a recognition that the States, although a union, maintain
certain attributes of sovereignty, including sovereign immunity.”
Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority v.
Metcalf &
Eddy, Inc.,
506 U.S.
139, 146 (1993). In proposing the Amendment, “Congress acted
not to change but to restore the original constitutional design.”
Alden, 527 U. S., at 722. The “sovereign immunity of
the States,” we have said, “neither derives from, nor is limited
by, the terms of the Eleventh Amendment.”
Id., at 713.
Consistent with this understanding of state
sovereign immunity, this Court has held that the Constitution bars
suits against nonconsenting States in a wide range of cases. See,
e.g., Federal Maritime Comm’n,
supra (actions by
private parties before federal administrative agencies);
Alden,
supra (suits by private parties against a
State in its own courts);
Blatchford v.
Native Village of
Noatak, 501 U.S.
775 (1991) (suits by Indian tribes in federal court);
Monaco,
292 U.S.
313 (suits by foreign states in federal court);
Ex parte New
York,
256 U.S.
490 (1921) (admiralty suits by private parties in federal
court);
Smith v.
Reeves,
178
U.S. 436 (1900) (suits by federal corporations in federal
court).
3
Despite this historical evidence that
interstate sovereign immunity is preserved in the constitutional
design, Hyatt insists that such immunity exists only as a “matter
of comity” and can be disregarded by the forum State.
Hall,
supra, at 416. He reasons that, before the Constitution was
ratified, the States had the power of fully independent nations to
deny immunity to fellow sovereigns; thus, the States must retain
that power today with respect to each other because “nothing in the
Constitution or formation of the Union altered that balance among
the still-sovereign states.” Brief for Respondent 14. Like the
majority in
Hall, he relies primarily on our early foreign
immunity decisions. For instance, he cites
Schooner Exchange
v.
McFaddon, in which the Court dismissed a libel action
against a French warship docked in Philadelphia because, under the
law of nations, a sovereign’s warships entering the ports of a
friendly nation are exempt from the jurisdiction of its courts. 7
Cranch, at 145–146. But whether the host nation respects
that sovereign immunity, Chief Justice Marshall noted, is for the
host nation to decide, for “[t]he jurisdiction of [a] nation within
its own territory is necessarily exclusive and absolute” and “is
susceptible of no limitation not imposed by itself.”
Id., at
136. Similar reasoning is found in
The Santissima Trinidad,
7 Wheat. 283, 353 (1822), where Justice Story noted that the host
nation’s consent to provide immunity “may be withdrawn upon notice
at any time, without just offence.”
The problem with Hyatt’s argument is that the
Constitution affirmatively altered the relationships between the
States, so that they no longer relate to each other solely as
foreign sovereigns. Each State’s equal dignity and sovereignty
under the Constitution implies certain constitutional
“limitation[s] on the sovereignty of all of its sister States.”
World-Wide Volkswagen Corp. v.
Woodson,
444 U.S.
286, 293 (1980). One such limitation is the inability of one
State to hale another into its courts without the latter’s consent.
The Constitution does not merely allow States to afford each other
immunity as a matter of com- ity; it embeds interstate sovereign
immunity within the constitutional design. Numerous provisions
reflect this reality.
To begin, Article I divests the States of the
traditional diplomatic and military tools that foreign sovereigns
possess. Specifically, the States can no longer prevent or remedy
departures from customary international law because the
Constitution deprives them of the independent power to lay imposts
or duties on imports and exports, to enter into treaties or
compacts, and to wage war. Compare Art. I, §10, with Declaration of
Independence ¶4 (asserting the power to “levy War, conclude Peace,
contract Alliances, [and] establish Commerce”); see
Kansas
v.
Colorado,
185 U.S.
125, 143 (1902).
Article IV also imposes duties on the States not
required by international law. The Court’s Full Faith and Credit
Clause precedents, for example, demand that state-court judgments
be accorded full effect in other States and preclude States from
“adopt[ing] any policy of hostility to the public Acts” of other
States.
Hyatt II, 578 U. S.
, at ___ (slip op.,
at 5) (internal quotation marks omitted); see Art. IV, §1.
States must also afford citizens of each State “all Privileges and
Immunities of Citizens in the several States” and honor extradition
requests upon “Demand of the executive Authority of the State” from
which the fugitive fled. Art. IV, §2. Foreign sovereigns
cannot demand these kinds of reciprocal responsibilities absent
consent or compact. But the Constitution imposes them as part of
its transformation of the States from a loose league of friendship
into a perpetual Union based on the “fundamental principle of
equal sovereignty among the States.”
Shelby County v.
Holder, 570 U.S. 529, 544 (2013) (emphasis in original and
internal quotation marks omitted).
The Constitution also reflects implicit
alterations to the States’ relationships with each other,
confirming that they are no longer fully independent nations. See
New Hampshire v.
Louisiana,
108 U.S.
76, 90 (1883). For example, States may not supply rules of
decision governing “disputes implicating the[ir] conflicting
rights.”
Texas Industries, Inc. v.
Radcliff Materials,
Inc.,
451 U.S.
630, 641 (1981). Thus, no State can apply its own law to
interstate disputes over borders,
Cissna v.
Tennessee,
246 U.S.
289, 295 (1918), water rights,
Hinderlider v.
La
Plata River & Cherry Creek Ditch Co.,
304 U.S.
92, 110 (1938), or the interpretation of interstate compacts,
Petty v.
Tennessee-Missouri Bridge Comm’n,
359 U.S.
275, 278–279 (1959). The States would have had the raw power to
apply their own law to such matters before they entered the Union,
but the Constitution implicitly forbids that exercise of power
because the “interstate . . . nature of the contro- versy
makes it inappropriate for state law to control.”
Texas
Industries,
supra, at 641. Some subjects that were
decided by pure “political power” before ratification now turn on
federal “rules of law.”
Rhode Island v.
Massachusetts, 12 Pet. 657, 737 (1838). See Clark, Federal
Common Law: A Structural Reinterpretation, 144 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1245,
1322–1331 (1996).
Interstate sovereign immunity is similarly
integral to the structure of the Constitution. Like a dispute over
borders or water rights, a State’s assertion of compulsory judicial
process over another State involves a direct conflict between
sovereigns. The Constitution implicitly strips States of any power
they once had to refuse each other sovereign immunity, just as it
denies them the power to resolve border disputes by political
means. Interstate immunity, in other words, is “implied as an
essential component of federalism.”
Hall, 440 U. S., at
430–431 (Blackmun, J., dissenting).
Hyatt argues that we should find no right to
sovereign immunity in another State’s courts because no
constitutional provision explicitly grants that immunity. But this
is precisely the type of “ahistorical literalism” that we have
rejected when “interpreting the scope of the States’ sovereign
immunity since the discredited decision in
Chisholm.”
Alden, 527 U. S., at 730; see
id., at 736
(“[T]he bare text of the Amendment is not an exhaustive description
of the States’ constitutional immunity from suit”). In light of our
constitutional structure, the historical understanding of state
immunity, and the swift enactment of the Eleventh Amendment after
the Court departed from this understanding in
Chisholm,
“[i]t is not rational to suppose that the sovereign power should be
dragged before a court.” Elliot’s Debates 555 (Marshall). Indeed,
the spirited historical debate over Article III courts and the
immediate reaction to
Chisholm make little sense if the
Eleventh Amendment were the only source of sovereign immunity and
private suits against the States could already be brought in
“partial, local tribunals.” Elliot’s Debates 532 (Madison). Nor
would the Founders have objected so strenuously to a neutral
federal forum for private suits against States if they were open to
a State being sued in a different State’s courts. Hyatt’s view thus
inverts the Founders’ concerns about state-court parochialism.
Hall,
supra, at 439 (Rehnquist, J., dissenting).
Moreover, Hyatt’s ahistorical literalism proves
too much. There are many other constitutional doctrines that are
not spelled out in the Constitution but are nevertheless implicit
in its structure and supported by historical practice—including,
for example, judicial review,
Marbury v.
Madison, 1
Cranch 137, 176–180 (1803); intergovernmental tax immunity,
McCulloch, 4 Wheat., at 435–436; executive privilege,
United States v.
Nixon,
418 U.S.
683, 705–706 (1974); executive immunity,
Nixon v.
Fitzgerald,
457 U.S.
731, 755–758 (1982); and the President’s re- moval power,
Myers v.
United States,
272 U.S.
52, 163–164 (1926). Like these doctrines, the States’ sovereign
immunity is a historically rooted principle embedded in the text
and structure of the Constitution.
C
With the historical record and precedent
against him, Hyatt defends
Hall on the basis of
stare
decisis. But
stare decisis is “ ‘not an inexorable
command,’ ”
Pearson v.
Callahan,
555 U.S.
223, 233 (2009), and we have held that it is “at its weakest
when we interpret the Constitution because our interpretation can
be altered only by constitutional amendment,”
Agostini v.
Felton,
521 U.S.
203, 235 (1997). The Court’s precedents identify a number of
factors to consider, four of which warrant mention here: the
quality of the decision’s reasoning; its consistency with related
decisions; legal developments since the decision; and reliance on
the decision. See
Janus v.
State, County, and Municipal
Employees, 585 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2018) (slip op., at
34–35);
United States v.
Gaudin,
515 U.S.
506, 521 (1995).
The first three factors support our decision to
overrule
Hall. We have already explained that
Hall
failed to account for the historical understanding of state
sovereign immunity and that it failed to consider how the
deprivation of traditional diplomatic tools reordered the States’
relationships with one another. We have also demon- strated that
Hall stands as an outlier in our sovereign-immunity
jurisprudence, particularly when compared to more recent
decisions.
As to the fourth factor, we acknowledge that
some plaintiffs, such as Hyatt, have relied on
Hall by suing
sovereign States. Because of our decision to overrule
Hall,
Hyatt unfortunately will suffer the loss of two decades of
litigation expenses and a final judgment against the Board for its
egregious conduct. But in virtually every case that overrules a
controlling precedent, the party relying on that precedent will
incur the loss of litigation expenses and a favorable decision
below. Those case-specific costs are not among the reliance
interests that would persuade us to adhere to an incorrect
resolution of an important constitutional question.
* * *
Nevada v.
Hall is irreconcilable
with our constitutional structure and with the historical evidence
showing a widespread preratification understanding that States
retained immunity from private suits, both in their own courts and
in other courts. We therefore overrule that decision. Because the
Board is thus immune from Hyatt’s suit in Nevada’s courts, the
judgment of the Nevada Supreme Court is reversed, and the case is
remanded for proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.