Page:FOMBPR v. CPI.pdf/12

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
Cite as: 598 U. S. ____ (2023)
9

Opinion of the Court

visions insulating the Board (and its members and employees) from monetary liability and barring suits challenging the Board’s budgetary decisions. See id., at 15–16, 38–40; see supra, at 3. Those protections, CPI maintains, would have no point “if the Board were immune generally.” Brief for CPI 16. So taken together (says CPI), PROMESA’s judicial review provisions are “incompatible with sovereign immunity.” Id., at 35.

But all those provisions serve a function without our reading an abrogation of immunity into PROMESA. In Sections 2126(a) and (c), Congress indeed contemplated the possibility of suits—and of relief—against the Board. And wisely so—because litigation against the Board can arise even though the Board enjoys sovereign immunity generally. For one thing, statutes other than PROMESA abrogate the Board’s immunity from particular claims. See generally supra, at 7. Consider Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, prohibiting various kinds of employment discrimination. That law, this Court has held, validly abrogates the immunity of “governments” and “governmental agencies” from all actions it authorizes. 42 U. S. C. §§2000e(a)–(b); see Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, 427 U. S. 445, 447–448 (1976). So if a Board employee were fired because of race, Section 2126(a) would tell him where to bring his suit and Section 2126(c) would govern the timing of injunctive and declaratory relief. And for another thing, the Board could decide to waive its immunity from particular suits or claims. Were it to do so, Sections 2126(a) and (c) would again kick in. So PROMESA’s judicial review scheme—absent a categorical abrogation of immunity—still has plenty of work to do. For similar reasons, this Court has held that other jurisdictional and judicial review provisions were insufficient to establish an abrogation. See Blatchford v. Native Village of Noatak, 501 U. S. 775, 786, and n. 4 (1991); Dellmuth, 491 U. S., at 231. Here, as there, providing for a judicial forum does not make the requisite clear statement.