## Facts

- State employees in Florida and Alabama sued state entities under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), alleging age discrimination in hiring, promotion, pay, and evaluation practices.
- Defendants included the Florida Board of Regents, the Florida Department of Corrections, and the University of Montevallo (a state university).
- In one case, the United States intervened to defend the constitutionality of applying the ADEA to the States through abrogation of sovereign immunity.
- Federal district courts reached differing results on whether the ADEA validly subjected States to private suits, prompting consolidated appellate review.
- The court of appeals held that the ADEA did not validly abrogate the States’ Eleventh Amendment immunity, and the Supreme Court granted review.

## Issues

1. Whether Congress unmistakably expressed an intent in the ADEA to subject States to private suits for money damages.
2. Whether Congress validly abrogated state sovereign immunity for ADEA claims under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment.
3. Whether the ADEA’s substantive restrictions on state age-based employment decisions are congruent and proportional to unconstitutional age discrimination by States under the Equal Protection Clause.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court affirmed that States are immune from private suits for money damages under the ADEA in federal court.
- Congress made its intent to abrogate state sovereign immunity unmistakably clear in the ADEA’s enforcement scheme.
- The abrogation was nonetheless invalid because, as applied to the States, the ADEA exceeded Congress’s § 5 enforcement authority.
- The Court reasoned that age classifications receive rational-basis review under the Equal Protection Clause and that the legislative record did not show a pattern of unconstitutional, irrational age discrimination by States.
- Because the ADEA prohibits substantially more conduct than the Constitution forbids, its broad remedial scheme was not congruent and proportional to any demonstrated unconstitutional state conduct.

## Legal Principles

- Congress may abrogate state sovereign immunity only by (1) making its intent unmistakably clear in the statute and (2) acting pursuant to a valid grant of constitutional authority.
- Under the Equal Protection Clause, age is not a suspect or quasi-suspect classification; state age-based distinctions are constitutional if rationally related to a legitimate state interest.
- Congress’s § 5 power enforces, but does not redefine, Fourteenth Amendment guarantees; remedial or preventive legislation must be congruent and proportional to unconstitutional conduct by the States.
- A federal statute that imposes a broad substantive standard on States, without a sufficient record of unconstitutional state conduct, may exceed § 5 and cannot validly abrogate state immunity.
- As a result, private individuals cannot recover money damages from nonconsenting state employers under the ADEA in federal court.

## Conclusion

The Court held that although the ADEA clearly attempted to subject States to private damages actions, Congress lacked § 5 authority to do so because the ADEA’s protections against age discrimination sweep beyond the Constitution’s rational-basis limit and were not justified by a demonstrated pattern of unconstitutional state discrimination.


Kimel v. Fla. Bd. of Regents, 528 U.S. 62 (2000)