The Eleventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prevents citizens of
the United States and of foreign countries from suing American states in
federal court. Congress proposed the amendment in 1794, and the states
ratified it, or approved it, the following year. It was the first constitutional
amendment passed to change a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Chisholm v. Georgia
The power of states against the power of the federal government has been
a controversial issue since adoption of the U.S. Constitution in 1788. In
1792, this issue arose under the question of whether citizens of one state
may sue another state in federal court. In the Constitution, Article III,
section 2 says, “The judicial power shall extend … to controversies …
between a state and citizens of another state.”
In 1792, Alexander Chisholm died in Georgia, leaving much property there. Chisholm’s heirs lived in South Carolina. The state of
Georgia seized Chisholm’s property and refused to give it to his heirs. His
heirs sued the state of Georgia in federal court to recover the property.
The case came before the U.S. Supreme Court in July 1792. Georgia
did not send an attorney to represent it before the Court. Georgia expected the Court to dismiss the case by ruling
that citizens of a state cannot sue another state
in federal court. In February 1793, however, the
Court interpreted Article III of the Constitution
to mean that citizens of a state can sue other
states in federal court.
Amending the Constitution
In the course of its opinion, the Supreme Court
said Georgia was not a sovereign state, but a
member of the Union of the United States. This
reasoning alarmed Americans who feared that
the federal government would be more powerful
than state governments under the Constitution. A movement arose to
amend the Constitution to change the Court’s ruling for future cases.
On March 5, 1794, Congress proposed the Eleventh Amendment.
If ratified, the amendment would change the power of the federal judiciary by withdrawing the power to hear cases against states by citizens of
other states and by citizens of foreign countries. When North Carolina
ratified the amendment on February 7, 1795, the amendment had been
ratified by three-fourths of the states, which is the number required for
an amendment to become part of the Constitution. The federal government, however, did not declare the amendment’s ratification until
January 8, 1798, which became its official effective date.
The Eleventh Amendment does not address the question of whether
citizens of a state may sue their own state in federal court. The U.S.
Supreme Court has decided that citizens may not sue their own states in
federal court. Over the years, however, the Court has found exceptions
to both rules, so that citizens can sue states, both theirs and others, in
federal courts in certain kinds of cases.