Page:FOMBPR v. CPI.pdf/10

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Cite as: 598 U. S. ____ (2023)
7

Opinion of the Court

The Court has found that standard met in only two situations. The first is when a statute says in so many words that it is stripping immunity from a sovereign entity. Congress, for example, has provided that States “shall not be immune,” under any “doctrine of sovereign immunity, from suit in Federal court” for patent or copyright infringement. 35 U. S. C. §296(a); 17 U. S. C. §511(a). Those provisions, we have noted, “could not have made any clearer Congress’s intent” to abrogate immunity. Allen v. Cooper, 589 U. S. ___, ___ (2020) (slip op., at 5) (internal quotation marks and alterations omitted). The second is when a statute creates a cause of action and authorizes suit against a government on that claim. Take the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) or the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). We held that each abrogated sovereign immunity by authorizing suits against employers—specifically including governments—for violating the statute’s provisions (i.e., for discriminating or denying leave). See Kimel, 528 U. S., at 73–74; Nevada Dept. of Human Resources v. Hibbs, 538 U. S. 721, 726 (2003). Or consider the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA). We likewise saw an abrogation in its authorization of tribal suits against States for violating their statutory duty to negotiate about gaming compacts. See Seminole Tribe of Fla. v. Florida, 517 U. S. 44, 56–57 (1996). True enough, none of those Acts expressly declared sovereigns non-immune (as the patent and copyright laws did). But all expressly authorized suits against sovereigns in service of enforcing statutory requirements. And recognizing immunity would have negated those authorizations: The very suits allowed against governments would automatically have been dismissed.

PROMESA fits neither of those two molds. Except in Title III debt-restructuring proceedings (not at issue here), the statute does not provide that the Board or Puerto Rico is subject to suit. See supra, at 2. And indeed, the exception