Facts
- Le Roy Torres, an Army Reservist and Texas state trooper employed by the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), was deployed to Iraq in 2007.
- Torres alleged exposure to toxic burn pits caused serious respiratory illness (constrictive bronchitis) that prevented him from performing the physical duties of a highway patrol trooper.
- Invoking the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act of 1994 (USERRA), Torres sought reemployment in an alternative position with similar status and pay as an accommodation for his service-connected disability.
- DPS declined to place Torres in a different permanent role (offering only a temporary assignment), and Torres resigned.
- Torres sued DPS in Texas state court under USERRA, seeking damages.
Issues
- Whether state sovereign immunity bars a private damages action against a nonconsenting State under USERRA.
- Whether, under the “plan of the Convention,” the States surrendered immunity from suits authorized by Congress pursuant to its Article I war powers.
Decision
- The Supreme Court reversed the Texas Court of Appeals and remanded (5–4; Breyer, J.).
- The Court held that Congress may authorize private damages suits against nonconsenting state employers under USERRA when acting pursuant to its Article I powers to raise and support armies and provide and maintain a navy.
- The Court concluded Texas was not immune from Torres’s USERRA suit, so the action could proceed in state court.
- Justice Kagan concurred, emphasizing the result rested on the special constitutional status of war powers rather than a general rule for all Article I powers.
- Justice Thomas dissented (joined by Alito, Gorsuch, and Barrett), arguing the decision conflicts with precedent limiting Article I-based suits against nonconsenting States.
Legal Principles
- States may lose sovereign immunity not only through express constitutional text but also through structural surrender “in the plan of the Convention” for certain federal powers.
- Where a federal power is “complete in itself” and the States consented to its full exercise at the founding, Congress may authorize private suits against States as a means of effectuating that power.
- Congress’s Article I war powers fall within this category; upon joining the Union, States accepted that their sovereignty would yield when necessary to create and maintain national armed forces.
- USERRA’s reemployment protections and damages remedy against state employers are a permissible means of supporting recruitment, retention, and reintegration of service members, and thus may be enforced through private actions against States.
Conclusion
The Court held that state sovereign immunity does not bar USERRA damages actions against state employers because the States, as part of the constitutional structure allocating war powers to the federal government, surrendered immunity from congressionally authorized suits necessary to raise and maintain the Armed Forces.