SOUTER, J., dissenting

to a state forum able to grant the relief sought. But this is mistaken in theory and contrary to practice.

Federal-question jurisdiction turns on subject matter, not the need to do some job a state court may wish to avoid; it addresses not the adequacy of a state judicial system, but the responsibility of federal courts to vindicate what is supposed to be controlling federal law. See Green v. Mansour, 474 U. S., at 68 (“[T]he availability of prospective relief of the sort awarded in Ex parte Young gives life to the Supremacy Clause. Remedies designed to end a continuing violation of federal law are necessary to vindicate the federal interest in assuring the supremacy of that law"); Pennhurst, supra, at 105 ("[T]he Young doctrine has been accepted as necessary to permit the federal courts to vindicate federal rights and hold state officials responsible to the supreme authority of the United States. . . . Our decisions repeatedly have emphasized that the Young doctrine rests on the need to promote the vindication of federal rights" (citations and internal quotation marks omitted)). See also Haring v. Prosise, 462 U.S. 306, 322-323 (1983) (rejecting proposed rule that would relegate certain § 1983 claims to state court in the face of the statute's basic policy of providing a federal forum for vindication of federal rights).11

11 Many federal cases with nondiverse parties, of course, might well have been brought as state cases if state relief could reasonably have been expected. Section 1983, for example, reflects the "grave congressional concern that the state courts had been deficient in protecting federal rights." Allen v. McCurry, 449 U. S. 90, 98-99 (1980) (citations omitted). See also Patsy v. Board of Regents of Fla., 457 U. S. 496, 503-507 (1982); American Law Institute, Study of the Division of Jurisdiction Between State and Federal Courts 168 (1968). And when the plaintiff suing the state officers has been an Indian tribe, the readiness of the state courts to vindicate the federal right has been less than perfect. Cf. United States v. Kagama, 118 U. S. 375, 384 (1886) ("Because of the local ill feeling, the people of the States where [the Indians] are found are often their deadliest enemies"); Comment, Oneida Nation v. County of Oneida: Tribal Rights of Action and the Indian Trade and Intercourse Act, 84 Colum. L. Rev. 1852, 18581859 (1984) ("State courts . . . were generally hostile to tribal plaintiffs,

SOUTER, J., dissenting

Thus, it is hardly surprising that Ex parte Young itself gives no hint that the Court thought the relief sought in federal court was unavailable in the Minnesota state courts at the time. Young, indeed, relied on prior cases in which federal courts had entertained suits against state officers notwithstanding the fact, as the Young Court expressly noted, that state forums were available in which the plaintiffs could have vindicated the same claims. See 209 U. S., at 153-155 (citing Reagan v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co., 154 U. S. 362 (1894), and Smyth v. Ames, 169 U. S. 466 (1898)). Reagan, like Young, was a rate case, in which the plaintiffs sued the State's Railroad Commission and the State Attorney General in federal court, seeking to enjoin enforcement of the commission's rate order and any attempt by the State's Attorney General to recover penalties for its violation. Federal jurisdiction was exercised, even though a state statute authorized suit against the commission in state court. While it is true, as the principal opinion notes, see ante, at 274, that the opinion in Reagan reflects the then-prevalent view that state consent to suit in a state forum amounted to consent in the federal forum, see Reagan, supra, at 392; contra, Smith v. Reeves, 178 U. S. 436, 441 (1900) (rejecting that view), the Reagan Court permitted the suit to proceed in federal court not on the ground that the state statute authorized a state suit but regardless of that point. The Court viewed the case as one to enjoin state officers from enforcing a state statute in violation of federal law, remarking that it "cannot . . . in any fair sense be considered a suit against the State." 154 U. S., at 392. Likewise, in Smyth, the historic rate case, a state statute authorized suit in state court to

for often the states themselves were the primary violators of tribal land rights"); Clinton & Hotopp, Judicial Enforcement of the Federal Restraints on Alienation of Indian Land: The Origins of the Eastern Land Claims, 31 Me. L. Rev. 17, 42-49 (1979) (describing the history of state evasions of the federal statutory restraint on alienations of Indian land and the federal response).

SOUTER, J., dissenting

challenge the constitutionality of rates imposed on railroads, but the Court permitted the federal suit for injunctive relief against the State Attorney General to go forward on the ground that it was not against the State. See 169 U. S., at 518. Had that not been clear enough, the opinion in Young would explain that in Smyth, the Court "did not base its decision on that section [of state law authorizing suit in state court] when it held that a suit of the nature of that before it was not a suit against a State, although brought against individual state officers for the purpose of enjoining them from enforcing, either by civil proceeding or indictment, an unconstitutional enactment to the injury of the plaintiff's right." Young, supra, at 154.

Nor did the Young Court hint that some inadequacy of state remedies was tantamount to the unavailability of a state forum. See ante, at 271-274 (principal opinion). The opinion in Young and other cases did indeed include observations that remedies available at law might provide inadequate relief to an aggrieved plaintiff, and Young itself noted that the failure to comply with the state statute would result in criminal penalties and hefty fines. But these remarks about the severity of the sanctions supported the Court's conviction that an equitable remedy was appropriate, see Young, supra, at 148, 163-166; see also Poindexter v. Greenhow, 114 U. S. 270, 299 (1885), not that a state forum was unavailable or federal jurisdiction subject to state preemption.12 The principal opinion's notion that availability of

12 The principal opinion also appears to rest on a misreading of Osborn v. Bank of United States, 9 Wheat. 738 (1824), as holding that the officer suit could proceed only because a suit directly against the State was prohibited. See ante, at 272. Chief Justice Marshall never suggested that a suit against the officers "would be barred" if the State could be named. Instead, he made clear that since the suit would be allowed to proceed if the State could be made a party, it should be allowed to proceed in its absence. The Chief Justice wrote: "[I]t would be subversive of the best established principles to say that the laws could not afford the same remedies against the agent employed in doing the wrong, which they would

SOUTER, J., dissenting

a state forum should have some bearing on the applicability of Ex parte Young is thus as much at odds with precedent as with basic jurisdictional principles.

There is one more strike against the principal opinion's assumption that there is some significance in the availability of a state forum. The day the Court decided Young, it also decided General Oil Co. v. Crain, 209 U. S. 211 (1908). General Oil reviewed an order of the Supreme Court of Tennessee dismissing a corporation's suit against a state officer for relief from what it claimed was his violation of the National Constitution. The state court had said it lacked jurisdiction in the matter after construing the suit as one against the State, which was immune as sovereign. This Court held the dismissal to be reversible error,13 ruling as a matter of federal law that the suit could not have been construed as being against the State. See id., at 226-228. State law conferring immunity on its officers could not, in other words, constitutionally excuse a state court of general jurisdiction from an obligation to hear a suit brought to enjoin a state official's action as exceeding his authority because unconstitutional.14

afford against him, could his principal be joined in suit." Osborn, 9 Wheat., at 843. And while the Court recognized the equitable remedy provided relief "more beneficial and complete than the law can give," id., at 845, the Court did not suggest that a remedy in state court was absent, or that any significance attached to the availability of a state forum.

13 The judgment was not actually reversed because the Court reached the previously unreviewed challenge to the official's action and found it meritless. See General Oil Co. v. Crain, 209 U. S., at 231.

14 General Oil's application is not limited to those cases in which a remedy in federal court is unavailable, notwithstanding the observation that state relief was required given the Eleventh Amendment bar to suit in federal court, General Oil Co. v. Crain, 209 U. S., at 226, since Young ensured that the federal courts would be open for injunctive claims just like those at issue in General Oil. See Fallon, The Ideologies of Federal Courts Law, 74 Va. L. Rev. 1141, 1209, n. 312 (1988) (sentences surrounding the references in General Oil to an unavailable federal forum make clear that "the crucial distinction determining the obligations of the state courts is not one involving the availability or nonavailability of federal judicial relief; it is, rather, 'between valid and invalid state laws, as determining'

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Cf. Martinez v. California, 444 U. S. 277, 284 (1980) (state immunity statute cannot immunize an officer from a § 1983 suit in state court). The consequence is that in every case in which Ex parte Young supports the exercise of federalquestion jurisdiction against a state officer, General Oil prohibits the declination of state jurisdiction over the same officer on state immunity grounds. Insofar as state-court jurisdiction would count against Ex parte Young in one case,15 it would presumably count against it as heavily in every case.

whether the suit is one against the state. . . . Because a state cannot authorize its officers to behave unconstitutionally, official action pursuant to an invalid state law cannot be protected by sovereign immunity; and a state court cannot decline to exercise jurisdiction on this basis") (quoting General Oil, supra, at 226); Monaghan, Third Party Standing, 84 Colum. L. Rev. 277, 294, n. 97 (1984) (“[I]f prospective relief is a necessary concomitant of a federal right, availability of such relief in federal courts may not free the states from an obligation to provide it as well").

Nor was General Oil overruled or otherwise "abandoned" by Georgia R. R. & Banking Co. v. Musgrove, 335 U. S. 900 (1949), in which the Court dismissed an appeal from a decision of the Supreme Court of Georgia holding that state sovereign immunity barred suits asserting constitutional claims against state officials. Cf. 16B C. Wright, A. Miller, & E. Cooper, Federal Practice and Procedure §4024, pp. 363-364 (2d ed. 1996). The one-paragraph per curiam dismissal in Musgrove stated that an adequate nonfederal ground supported the state court's decision but did not identify the state ground involved; the posture of the case suggests that the Court may have viewed the lower court's decision as based on a valid state law regarding the timing and not the existence of state remedies. See Fallon, supra, at 1211, n. 317.

Finally, insofar as General Oil may be read to require that States provide some adequate judicial remedy to redress acts of state officials that violate federal law, see, e. g., Collins, Article III Cases, State Court Duties, and the Madisonian Compromise, 1995 Wis. L. Rev. 39, 164, n. 359, but not necessarily injunctive relief in particular, its relevance for our purposes remains the same, that is, that every litigant seeking prospective relief in federal court under Young may obtain some adequate redress in state court as well.

15

5 Quite apart even from what General Oil may mandate, it appears that in all 50 States, as a matter of course, private plaintiffs may obtain declaratory and injunctive relief in state court for the acts of state officials in