Abrogation doctrine
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The abrogation doctrine is a doctrine in United States constitutional law which permits the U.S. Congress to allow lawsuits seeking monetary damages against individual U.S. states when Congress acts pursuant to powers delegated to it by amendments subsequent to the Eleventh Amendment. ("Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer ... continued the line of reasoning that Rehnquist had acknowledged in Fry v. United States ... that cases involving Congress’ authority under Section Five present different problems than cases involving Congress’ commerce clause authority."[1]) Where the immunity of the states is abrogated, it is most frequently pursuant to §5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which explicitly allows Congress to enforce its guarantees on the states and effectively overrides states' Eleventh Amendment sovereign immunity.
[edit] Development
The doctrine was first announced by the United States Supreme Court in a unanimous decision written by Justice Rehnquist, Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, 427 U.S. 445 (1976). The doctrine has since developed a number of nuances and limitations. In particular, later cases explained that the Court would not infer Congressional intent to abrogate sovereign immunity, but would only uphold abrogations where Congress has "unequivocably express[ed] its intention to abrogate the Eleventh Amendment bar to suits against states in federal court." In order to do this, Congress must "mak[e] its intention unmistakably clear in the language of the statute." Atascadero State Hospital v. Scanlon, 473 U.S. 234 (1985).
Another limitation that the courts have read into Congressional power to abrogate is the "congruence and proportionality" test, first discussed in City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507 (1997). Because the Fourteenth Amendment allows Congress to take "appropriate" action to enforce rights, the Court has determined that such action must be congruent and proportional to the deprivation of the right that Congress is seeking to remedy.
The Court has also found that Congress may only abrogate state immunity with respect to causes of action that are created under constitutional provisions that expand the power of Congress with respect to the states. In Seminole Tribe v. Florida, 517 U.S. 44 (1996), the Court determined that this power may not be exercised based on any clause in the express powers of Congress under Article One, such as the Commerce Clause, or the Copyright Clause. This is because the Eleventh Amendment was passed after Article One had been ratified, and the Amendment therefore created a limitation on the Article I powers of Congress.
In Central Virginia Community College v. Katz, the Court retreated from some its broad language in Seminole Tribe v. Florida. The Court held that state sovereign immunity was not implicated by the exercise of in rem jurisdiction by bankruptcy courts established under the Bankruptcy Clause of Article I.
[edit] References
- ^ R. Colker & J. Scott, Rehnquist & Federalism: an Emperical Perspective in C. Bradley, THE REHNQUIST LEGACY, 279.
