Abrogation doctrine

From dKosopedia

Category: Law

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, so long as this is usually done pursuant to a constitutional limitation on the power of the states. Where the immunity of the states is waived, it is most frequently pursuant to the Fourteenth Amendment, which allows Congress to enforce its guarantees on the states and effectively overrides states' Eleventh Amendment sovereign immunity.

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). It 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 One powers of Congress.