Eleventh Amendment state sovereign immunity bar (official-capacity damages / retrospective relief)

DEFENSE · 42usc1983:x-eleventh-amendment

Bars damages suits in federal court against a State or state officials in their official capacities (absent waiver, whereas § 1983 does not abrogate sovereign immunity under Quern v. Jordan, 440 U.S. 332 (1979)), but does not bar personal-capacity suits (Hafer) or Ex parte Young prospective injunctive relief.

Exact element source

Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State

Source: docroot/ir/usc/title42.jsonl#title42_sec1983; Unicode character offsets [46:145] (end exclusive); SHA-256 88fe01322b9d94860a669ec452f558146e2745845070bc43583671ce12acb2bb.

All variants

Recorded DB variant labels, including zero-count variants
Variant	Description	Merits instance blocks	Distinct cases	Example cases (up to 3 per group)
sovereign-immunity/personal-capacity-damages-not-against-treasury		1 Satisfied 0; not satisfied 1; excluded context 0	1	/us/502/0021-01 — Supreme Court of the United States · 1991 — not

How courts decided this element

Annotation blocks, including explicitly excluded context
Case	Element	Holding and scope	Variant	Exact source quotations
/us/502/0021-01 — Supreme Court of the United States · 1991	Eleventh Amendment state sovereign immunity bar (official-capacity damages / retrospective relief)	not Counted merits instance applied / merits basis: law	sovereign-immunity/personal-capacity-damages-not-against-treasury	That is, the Eleventh Amendment does not erect a barrier against suits to impose “individual and personal liability” on state officials under § 1983. Source: `docroot/ir/caselaw/us_502.jsonl#/us/502/0021-01`; Unicode character offsets [15323:15472] (end exclusive); SHA-256 `b981c1cb2a9bf4bab619f49a26674002633c907c86f39bd53f955befb5605c07`. Evidence kind: rule; polarity: not recorded; absent flag: 0; quoted-rule flag: 0 (1 = tagged; 0 = not tagged) Insofar as respondents seek damages against Hafer personally, the Eleventh Amendment does not restrict their ability to sue in federal court. Source: `docroot/ir/caselaw/us_502.jsonl#/us/502/0021-01`; Unicode character offsets [15725:15866] (end exclusive); SHA-256 `b981c1cb2a9bf4bab619f49a26674002633c907c86f39bd53f955befb5605c07`. Evidence kind: held; polarity: not recorded; absent flag: 0; quoted-rule flag: 0 (1 = tagged; 0 = not tagged)

Court interpretations

interpretation

That is, the Eleventh Amendment does not erect a barrier against suits to impose “individual and personal liability” on state officials under § 1983.

/us/502/0021-01 — Supreme Court of the United States · 1991

That is, the Eleventh Amendment does not erect a barrier against suits to impose “individual and personal liability” on state officials under § 1983.

Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_502.jsonl#/us/502/0021-01; Unicode character offsets [15323:15472] (end exclusive); SHA-256 b981c1cb2a9bf4bab619f49a26674002633c907c86f39bd53f955befb5605c07.