The Eleventh Amendment

The Eleventh Amendment provides that the judicial power of the United States shall not extend to any suit against one of the states by citizens of another state or of a foreign country. It was the first amendment adopted after the Bill of Rights, a direct response to Chisholm v. Georgia in 1793, in which the Supreme Court allowed a South Carolina man to sue Georgia in federal court over a Revolutionary War debt. States, many of them heavily indebted, feared a flood of creditor lawsuits, and Congress proposed the amendment the next year. It was ratified in 1795.

The Supreme Court has read the amendment far more broadly than its text. In Hans v. Louisiana in 1890, it held that states are also immune from suits by their own citizens, treating the amendment as evidence of a broader principle of state sovereign immunity. Later cases held that Congress generally cannot override that immunity using its Article I powers, as in Seminole Tribe v. Florida in 1996, and that states are immune from private suits under federal law in their own courts, as in Alden v. Maine in 1999.

There are important exceptions. Under Ex parte Young in 1908, people may sue state officials to stop ongoing violations of federal law. Congress may abrogate state immunity when enforcing the Fourteenth Amendment, states may waive their immunity, and the immunity does not protect cities and counties. The federal government and other states may also sue a state. Supporters say the doctrine protects states' dignity and treasuries, while critics say it leaves people unable to recover damages when states violate federal law.