Ex parte Young

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Ex parte Young
unconstitutional
law.
Court membership
Chief Justice
Melville Fuller
Associate Justices
David J. Brewer
Edward D. White · Rufus W. Peckham
Joseph McKenna · Oliver W. Holmes Jr.
William R. Day · William H. Moody
Case opinions
MajorityPeckham, joined by Fuller, Brewer, White, McKenna, Holmes, Day, Moody
DissentHarlan
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. XI

Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123 (1908), is a

federal courts for injunctions against officials acting on behalf of states of the union to proceed despite the State's sovereign immunity, when the State acted contrary to any federal law or contrary to the Constitution.[1]

Facts

The

Attorney General of Minnesota
, to prevent him from enforcing the law.

Young argued that the

writ of habeas corpus
for his release.

Issue

The Supreme Court faced three issues here. The first involved three questions as to the constitutionality of the Minnesota statutes:

  1. Did the statutes violate Fourteenth Amendment due process by setting too low a cap on the rates that railroads could charge?
  2. Did the statutes violate Fourteenth Amendment due process by establishing punishments so harsh that no one would challenge the laws, for fear of the consequences of losing such a challenge?
  3. Did the statutes violate the Commerce Clause by interfering with commerce between the states?

The second issue exposed the tension between the Eleventh Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment. The Eleventh Amendment had recently been held in

federal courts
from hearing suits by citizens against their own states. Conversely, the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the states from violating the due process rights of their citizens. Could a federal court entertain a lawsuit seeking to enjoin a state official from carrying out state laws that were purportedly in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment?

Result

The Court, in an opinion written by Justice

Rufus Wheeler Peckham
, found that the Minnesota laws with respect to the railroad rates were unconstitutional, and moved on to the issue of whether the state official could be enjoined from prosecuting violations of such laws.

Failure to enjoin the unconstitutional statute would require the person subject to a potential violation to either pay the increased rate or face the threat of prosecution. Therefore, the Court determined that it would be unfair to require challengers of a law to wait until they faced a harsh sanction before they could bring any kind of action questioning the validity of that law. The Court also noted that, although a number of cases had held that the state itself could not be sued, those cases did not prohibit enjoining a state official, as an individual, from carrying out some task on behalf of the state.

Young contended that he was merely acting for the state of Minnesota when he sought to enforce its laws. The Court disagreed, holding that when a state official does something that is unconstitutional, the official cannot possibly be doing it in the name of the state, because the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution means that the Constitution overrides all the laws of the states, invalidating any contrary laws. Therefore, when a state official attempts to enforce an unconstitutional law, that individual is stripped of his official character. He becomes merely another citizen who can constitutionally be brought before a court by a party seeking injunctive relief.

The Court, in laying out this doctrine, created two legal fictions:

  1. That such a suit is not against the state, but merely against the individual officer, who cannot be acting on behalf of the state when he enforces a law that is unconstitutional; and
  2. That an individual can be a
    state actor
    for Fourteenth Amendment purposes (which only prohibits unconstitutional acts by the state, and those who represent it) while remaining a private person for sovereign immunity purposes.

The Court also rejected the contention raised by Young that an injunction was inappropriate because the railroads could get an adequate remedy by testing the statute in the courts. The Court noted that the railroads could never recover the costs of obeying the law while waiting for it to be adjudicated unconstitutional.

Based on these findings, the Court held that suits may be brought to enjoin state officials from enforcing unconstitutional laws in the United States District Courts, which have the power to enjoin those officials from enforcing such laws.

Dissent

Justice John Marshall Harlan angrily dissented, writing that the only reason that the suit was brought against Young was because he represented the state, and that the result of the suit would be to "tie the hands of the state". This was therefore no different from a suit against the state itself, prohibited by the Eleventh Amendment.

Harlan observed that the state can never act except through its officers, and this decision would deprive the state of the representation of its officers in court. He therefore condemned the decision as a "radical change in our government system" that "would place the states of the Union in a condition of inferiority never dreamed of when the Constitution was adopted or when the Eleventh Amendment was made a part of the supreme law of the land."

Harlan also contended that Constitutional rights can be enforced by suits in the state courts, instead of the federal courts. If the state's trial courts did not enforce the Constitution, they could be appealed up to the state supreme court, which could then be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

See also

References

  1. ^ Erwin Chemerinskiy, Federal Jurisdiction 458-461 (7th. ed.)

External links

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