What Is Eleventh Amendment Immunity?
Carlos Manuel Vazquez For some time now, the Supreme Court has been giving conflicting indications about the nature of the immunity conferred by the Eleventh Amendment. According to one view, the Amendment confers an immunity from the original jurisdiction of the federal courts only. It functions as a forum-allocation principle, requiring that suits against the states be brought by private litigants initially in the state courts. The Supremacy Clause obligates the state courts to award whatever remedies against the states federal law requires, and the Supreme Court retains the power to review their decisions to make sure they do. Other cases, however, including the Court’s recent decision in Seminole Tribe v. Florida, suggest that nothing in the Constitution requires the states to entertain private suits against themselves in their own courts. If so, then the Eleventh Amendment, by protecting the states from private actions in the federal courts, effectively immunizes the states from a
