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Volume 4 Number 3 COURT RULES THAT STATES ARE IMMUNE FROM SUIT UNDER THE EDUCATION OF THE HANDICAPPED ACT
3. The Opinion
Justice Kennedy wrote the opinion of the Court, joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices White, O'Connor and Scalia. While recognizing that Congress has the right, under the sec. 5 enforcement authority of the 14th Amendment, to abrogate the States' Eleventh Amendment immunity, the Court majority said such authority must be tempered because it "upsets the fundamental constitutional balance between the Federal Government and the States." The majority proceeded to apply what it calls "a simple but stringent test":
.Congress may abrogate the States' constitutionally secured immunity from suit in federal court only by making its intention. unmistakably clear in the language of the statute."
This is the same language the Court had used in Alascadero. The Court further stated that:
"legislative history generally will be irrelevant to a judicial inquiry into whether Congress intended to abrogate the Eleventh Amendment. If Congress' intention is 'unmistakably clear in the language of the statute,' recourse to legislative history will be unnecessary; if Congress' intention is not unmistakably clear, recourse to legislative history will be futile, because by definition the rule of Alascadero will not be met."
4. The Dissent
Justice Brennan dissented, joined by Justices Marshall, Blackmun and Stevens. Justices Blackmun and Stevens also wrote brief separate dissents. The Brennan dissent reasoned that Congress had abrogated state immunity in the enactment of the Education of the Handicapped Act and that the Court should apply the standard method for determining congressional intent, i.e., examine the legislative history, as well as the statute's words, and not the novel rule the majority has here devised.
"In light of the States' pervasive role under the EHA, and the clarity with which the statute imposes both procedural and substantive obligations on the States, I have no trouble in inferring from the text of the EHA that 'Congress intended that the state should be named as an opposing party, if not the sole party, to [a] proceeding' brought under sec. 14159(e)(2), whatever remedy is sought, and that Congress thereby abrogated Eleventh Amendment immunity from suit in federal court ... Indeed, in those situations where a State has elected to provide educational services to the handicapped directly, or where under the EFIA it is required to provide direct services, the State would appear to be the only proper defendant in a federal action to enforce EHA rights."
The dissenters concluded that: "The text and legislative history of the EHA ... make it unmistakably clear that Congress there intended to abrogate state immunity from suit." Civil Rights advocates in Congress plan to seek amendment of the Education of the Handicapped Act to make clear that States can be sued under the bill.
Related Cases
On June 15, 1989, the Court ruled 5-4 in Will v. Michigan Department of State Police, that a State or an official of the State while acting in his or her official capacity is not a 'person' within the meaning of sec. 1983 (sec. 1 of the 1871 Civil Rights Act) and thus cannot be sued in state court for violations of the U.S. Constitution. Sec. 1983 provides that any person who under color of state law deprives any individual "of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured..."
Ray Will filed suit in Michigan Circuit Court alleging "various violations of the United States and Michigan Constitutions as a claim under sec. 1983." Will claimed he had been denied a promotion by the Department of State Police "because his brother had been a student activist and the subject of a 'red squad file maintained by ... [the Department of State Police]."
  
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