Editing Sovereign immunity (section)

====State sovereign immunity====
In ''[[Hans v. Louisiana]]'' (1890), the [[Supreme Court of the United States]] held that the [[Eleventh Amendment to the United States Constitution|Eleventh Amendment]] (1795) re-affirms that states possess sovereign immunity and are therefore generally immune from being sued in federal court without their consent. In later cases, the Supreme Court has strengthened state sovereign immunity considerably. In ''[[Blatchford v. Native Village of Noatak]]'' (1991), the court explained that

{{blockquote|we have understood the Eleventh Amendment to stand not so much for what it says, but for the presupposition of our constitutional structure which it confirms: that the States entered the federal system with their sovereignty intact; that the judicial authority in Article III is limited by this sovereignty, and that a State will therefore not be subject to suit in federal court unless it has consented to suit, either expressly or in the "plan of the convention". [Citations omitted.]}}

In ''[[Alden v. Maine]]'' (1999), the Court explained that while it has 
{{blockquote|sometimes referred to the States' immunity from suit as "Eleventh Amendment immunity"[,] [that] phrase is [a] convenient shorthand but something of a misnomer, [because] the sovereign immunity of the States neither derives from, nor is limited by, the terms of the Eleventh Amendment. Rather, as 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 (either literally or by virtue of their admission into the Union upon an equal footing with the other States) except as altered by the plan of the Convention or certain constitutional Amendments.}}

Writing for the Court in ''Alden'', Justice [[Anthony Kennedy]] argued that in view of this, and given the limited nature of congressional power delegated by the original unamended Constitution, the court could not "conclude that the specific Article I powers delegated to Congress necessarily include, by virtue of the Necessary and Proper Clause or otherwise, the incidental authority to subject the States to private suits as a means of achieving objectives otherwise within the scope of the enumerated powers".

However, a "consequence of [the] Court's recognition of preratification sovereignty as the source of immunity from suit is that ''only'' States and ''arms of the State'' possess immunity from suits authorized by federal law". ''[[Northern Insurance Company of New York v. Chatham County]]'' (2006, emphasis added). Thus, cities and municipalities lack sovereign immunity, ''[[Jinks v. Richland County]]'' (2003), and counties are not generally considered to have sovereign immunity, even when they "exercise a 'slice of state power{{'"}}. ''[[Lake Country Estates, Inc. v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency]]'' (1979). Nor are school districts, per ''[[Mt. Healthy City School District Board of Education v. Doyle]]'' (1977).

Additionally, Congress can abrogate state sovereign immunity when it acts pursuant to powers delegated to it by any amendments ratified after the Eleventh Amendment. The [[abrogation doctrine]], established by the Supreme Court in ''[[Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer]]'' (1976), is most often implicated in cases that involve Section 5 of the [[Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Fourteenth Amendment]], which explicitly allows Congress to enforce its guarantees on the states.