ALLEN ET AL. v. COOPER, GOVERNOR OF NORTH CAROLINA, ET AL.
No. 18-877
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued November 5, 2019—Decided March 23, 2020
589 U.S. ___ (2020)
Syllabus
NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued. The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader. See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Syllabus
ALLEN ET AL. v. COOPER, GOVERNOR OF NORTH CAROLINA, ET AL.
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 18-877. Argued November 5, 2019—Decided March 23, 2020
Held: Congress lacked authority to abrogate the States’ immunity from copyright infringement suits in the
(a) In general, a federal court may not hear a suit brought by any person against a nonconsenting State. But such suits are permitted if Congress has enacted “unequivocal statutory language” abrogating the States’ immunity from suit, Seminole Tribe of Fla. v. Florida, 517 U. S. 44, 56, and some constitutional provision allows Congress to have thus encroached on the States’ sovereignty. Congress used clear language to abrogate the States’ immunity from copyright infringement suits in the
(b) The Intellectual Property Clause enables Congress to grant both copyrights and patents. In Allen‘s view, Congress‘s authority to abrogate sovereign immunity from copyright suits naturally follows, in order to “secur[e]” a copyright holder‘s “exclusive Right” as against a State‘s intrusion. But that theory was rejected in Florida Prepaid. That case considered the constitutionality of the
(c) Section 5 of the
895 F. 3d 337, affirmed.
KAGAN, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS, C. J., and ALITO, SOTOMAYOR, GORSUCH, and KAVANAUGH, JJ., joined, and in which THOMAS, J., joined except for the final paragraph in Part II–A and the final paragraph in Part II–B. THOMAS, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. BREYER, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which GINSBURG, J., joined.
Opinion of the Court
NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the preliminary print of the United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
No. 18-877
FREDERICK L. ALLEN, ET AL., PETITIONERS v. ROY A. COOPER, III, GOVERNOR OF NORTH CAROLINA, ET AL.
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
[March 23, 2020]
JUSTICE KAGAN delivered the opinion of the Court.
In two basically identical statutes passed in the early 1990s, Congress sought to strip the States of their sovereign immunity from patent and copyright infringement suits. Not long after, this Court held in Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd. v. College Savings Bank, 527 U. S. 627 (1999), that the patent statute lacked a valid constitutional basis. Today, we take up the copyright statute. We find that our decision in Florida Prepaid compels the same conclusion.
I
In 1717, the pirate Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, captured a French slave ship in the West Indies and renamed her Queen Anne‘s Revenge. The vessel became his flagship. Carrying some 40 cannons and 300 men, the Revenge took many prizes as she sailed around the Caribbean and up the North American coast. But her reign over those seas was short-lived. In 1718, the ship ran aground on a sandbar a mile off Beaufort, North Carolina. Blackbeard and most of his crew escaped without harm. Not so the Revenge. She sank beneath the waters, where she lay undisturbed for nearly 300 years.
In 1996, a marine salvage company named Intersal, Inc., discovered the shipwreck. Under federal and state law, the wreck belongs to North Carolina. See
This suit arises from North Carolina‘s publication of some of Allen‘s videos and photos. Allen first protested in 2013 that the State was infringing his copyrights by uploading his work to its website without permission. To address that allegation, North Carolina agreed to a settlement paying Allen $15,000 and laying out the parties’ respective rights to the materials. But Allen and the State soon found themselves embroiled in another dispute. Allen complained that North Carolina had impermissibly posted five of his videos online and used one of his photos in a newsletter. When the State declined to admit wrongdoing, Allen filed this action in Federal District Court. It charges the State with copyright infringement (call it a modern form of piracy) and seeks money damages.
North Carolina moved to dismiss the suit on the ground of sovereign immunity. It invoked the general rule that federal courts cannot hear suits brought by individuals against nonconsenting States. See State Defendants’ Memorandum in No. 15–627 (EDNC), Doc. 50, p. 7. But Allen responded that an exception to the rule applied because Congress had abrogated the States’ sovereign immunity from suits like his. See Plaintiffs’ Response, Doc. 57, p. 7. The
The District Court agreed. Quoting the
On interlocutory appeal, the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed. It read Florida Prepaid to prevent recourse to Section 5 no less than to
Because the Court of Appeals held a federal statute invalid, this Court granted certiorari. 587 U. S. ___ (2019). We now affirm.
II
In our constitutional scheme, a federal court generally may not hear a suit brought by any person against a nonconsenting State. That bar is nowhere explicitly set out in the Constitution. The text of the
But not entirely. This Court has permitted a federal court to entertain a suit against a nonconsenting State on two conditions. First, Congress must have enacted “unequivocal statutory language” abrogating the States’ immunity from the suit. Seminole Tribe, 517 U. S., at 56 (internal quotation marks omitted);
No one here disputes that Congress used clear enough language to abrogate the States’ immunity from copyright infringement suits. As described above, the
The contested question is whether Congress had authority to take that step. Allen maintains that it did, under either of two constitutional provisions. He first points to the clause in
A
Congress has power under
In Allen‘s view, Congress‘s authority to abrogate sovereign immunity from copyright suits naturally follows. Abrogation is the single best—or maybe, he says, the only—way for Congress to “secur[e]” a copyright holder‘s “exclusive Right[s]” as against a State‘s intrusion. See Brief for Petitioners 20 (quoting
The problem for Allen is that this Court has already rejected his theory. The Intellectual Property Clause, as just noted, covers copyrights and patents alike. So it was the first place the Florida Prepaid Court looked when deciding whether the
Allen claims, however, that a later case offers an exit ramp from Florida Prepaid. In Central Va. Community College v. Katz, 546 U. S. 356, 359 (2006), we held that Article I‘s Bankruptcy Clause enables Congress to subject nonconsenting States to bankruptcy proceedings (there, to recover a preferential transfer). We thus exempted the Bankruptcy Clause from Seminole Tribe‘s general rule that
But everything in Katz is about and limited to the Bankruptcy Clause; the opinion reflects what might be called bankruptcy exceptionalism. In part, Katz rested on the “singular nature” of bankruptcy jurisdiction. 546 U. S., at 369, n. 9. That jurisdiction is, and was at the Founding, “principally in rem“—meaning that it is “premised on the debtor and his estate, and not on the creditors” (including a State). Id., at 369–370 (internal quotation marks omitted). For that reason, we thought, “it does not implicate States’ sovereignty to nearly the same degree as other kinds of jurisdiction.” Id., at 362. In remaining part, Katz focused on the Bankruptcy Clause‘s “unique history.” Id., at 369, n. 9. The Clause emerged from a felt need to curb the States’ authority. The States, we explained, “had wildly divergent schemes” for discharging debt, and often “refus[ed] to respect one another‘s discharge orders.” Id., at 365, 377. “[T]he Framers’ primary goal” in adopting the Clause was to address that problem—to stop “competing sovereigns[]” from interfering with a debtor‘s discharge. Id., at 373. And in that project, the Framers intended federal courts to play a leading role. The nation‘s first Bankruptcy Act, for example, empowered those courts to order that States release people they were holding in debtors’ prisons. See id., at 374. So through and through, we thought, the Bankruptcy Clause embraced the idea that federal courts could impose on state sovereignty. In that, it was sui generis—again, “unique“—among Article I‘s grants of authority. Id., at 369, n. 9.
Indeed, Katz‘s view of the Bankruptcy Clause had a yet more striking aspect, which further separates it from any other. The Court might have concluded from its analysis that the Clause allows Congress
We therefore discarded our usual rule—which Allen accepts as applying here—that Congress must speak, and indeed speak unequivocally, to abrogate sovereign immunity. Compare id., at 378–379 (“[O]ur decision today” does not “rest[] on any statement Congress ha[s] made on the subject of state sovereign immunity“), with supra, at 5 (our ordinary rule). Our decision, in short, viewed bankruptcy as on a different plane, governed by principles all its own. Nothing in that understanding invites the kind of general, “clause-by-clause” reexamination of
And even if Katz‘s confines were not so clear, Florida Prepaid, together with stare decisis, would still doom Allen‘s argument. As Allen recognizes, if the Intellectual Property Clause permits the
B
Section 5 of the
For
To decide whether a law passes muster, this Court has framed a type of means-end test. For Congress‘s action to fall within its Section 5 authority, we have said, “[t]here must be a congruence and proportionality between the injury to be prevented or remedied and the means adopted to that end.” Boerne, 521 U. S., at 520. On the one hand, courts are to consider the constitutional problem Congress faced—both the nature and the extent of state conduct violating the
All this raises the question: When does the
Because the same is true of patent infringement, Florida Prepaid again serves as the critical precedent. That decision defined the scope of unconstitutional infringement in line with the caselaw cited above—as intentional conduct for which there is no adequate state remedy. See 527 U. S., at 642–643, 645. It then searched for evidence of that sort of infringement in the legislative record of the
In enacting the
Given that absence of evidence, Florida Prepaid held, the
It is not. Behind the headline-grabbing conclusion, nothing in the Oman Report, or the rest of the legislative record, cures the problems we identified in Florida Prepaid. As an initial matter, the concrete evidence of States infringing copyrights (even ignoring whether those acts violate due process) is scarcely more impressive than what the Florida Prepaid Court saw. Despite undertaking an exhaustive search, Oman came up with only a dozen possible examples of state infringement. He listed seven court cases brought against States (with another two dismissed on the merits) and five anecdotes taken from public comments (but not further corroborated). See Oman Report, at 7–9, 90–97. In testifying about the report, Oman acknowledged that state infringement is “not widespread” and “the States are not going to get involved in wholesale violation of the copyright laws.” Hearings on H. R. 1131 before the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Administration of Justice, 101st Cong., 1st Sess., 53 (1989) (House Hearings). Indeed, he opined: “They are all respectful of the copyright law” and “will continue to respect the law“; what State, after all, would “want[] to get a reputation as a copyright pirate?” Id., at 8. The bill‘s House and Senate sponsors got the point. The former admitted that “there have not been any significant number” of copyright violations by States. Id., at 48 (Rep. Kastenmeier). And the latter conceded he could not currently see “a big problem.” Hearings on S. 497 before the Subcommittee on Patents, Copyrights and Trademarks, 101st Cong., 1st Sess., 130 (1989) (Sen. DeConcini). This is not, to put the matter charitably, the stuff from which Section 5 legislation ordinarily arises.
And it gets only worse. Neither the Oman Report nor any other part of the legislative record shows concern with whether the States’ copyright infringements (however few and far between) violated the Due Process Clause. Of the 12 infringements listed in the report, only two appear intentional, as they must be to raise a constitutional issue. See Oman Report, at 7–8, 91 (describing a judicial finding of “willful” infringement and a public comment charging continued infringement after a copyright owner complained). As Oman testified, the far greater problem was the frequency of “honest mistakes” or “innocent” misunderstandings; the benefit of the bill, he therefore thought, would be to “guard against sloppiness.” House Hearings, at 9. Likewise, the legislative record contains no information about the availability of state-law remedies for copyright infringement (such as contract or unjust enrichment suits)—even though
Under Florida Prepaid, the
That conclusion, however, need not prevent Congress from passing a valid copyright abrogation law in the future. In doing so, Congress would presumably approach the issue differently than when it passed the
III
Florida Prepaid all but prewrote our decision today. That precedent made clear that
It is so ordered.
Opinion of THOMAS, J.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
No. 18-877
FREDERICK L. ALLEN, ET AL., PETITIONERS v. ROY A. COOPER, III, GOVERNOR OF NORTH CAROLINA, ET AL.
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
[March 23, 2020]
JUSTICE THOMAS, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
I agree with the Court‘s conclusion that the
First, although I agree that Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd. v. College Savings Bank, 527 U. S. 627 (1999), is binding precedent, I cannot join the Court‘s discussion of stare decisis. The Court claims we need “special justification[s]” to overrule precedent because error alone “cannot overcome stare decisis.” Ante, at 9–10. That approach “does not comport
Here, adherence to our precedent is warranted because petitioners have not demonstrated that our decision in Florida Prepaid “is incorrect, much less demonstrably erroneous.” Gamble, 587 U. S., at ___ (same) (slip op., at 17). The Court in Florida Prepaid correctly concluded that “Congress may not abrogate state sovereign immunity pursuant to its
Second, I do not join the Court‘s discussion regarding future copyright legislation. In my view, we should opine on “only the case before us in light of the record before us.” Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck, 587 U. S. ___ (2019) (slip op., at 15). We should not purport to advise Congress on how it might exercise its legislative authority, nor give our blessing to hypothetical statutes or legislative records not at issue here.
Finally, I believe the question whether copyrights are property within the original meaning of the
For these reasons, I join all of the Court‘s opinion except for the final paragraph in Part II–A and the final paragraph in Part II–B.
BREYER, J., concurring in judgment
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
No. 18-877
FREDERICK L. ALLEN, ET AL., PETITIONERS v. ROY A. COOPER, III, GOVERNOR OF NORTH CAROLINA, ET AL.
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
[March 23, 2020]
JUSTICE BREYER, with whom JUSTICE GINSBURG joins, concurring in the judgment.
The Constitution gives Congress certain enumerated powers. One of them is set forth in the Intellectual Property Clause: Congress may “promote the Progress of
Yet the Court holds otherwise. In its view, Congress’ power under the Intellectual Property Clause cannot sup-port a federal law providing that, when proven to have pirated intellectual property, States must pay for what they plundered. Ante, at 6–10. To subject nonconsenting States to private suits for copyright or patent infringement, says the Court, Congress must endeavor to pass a more “tailored statute” than the one before us, relying not on the Intellectual Property Clause, but on Section 5 of the
That our sovereign-immunity precedents can be said to call for so uncertain a voyage suggests that something is amiss. Indeed, we went astray in Seminole Tribe of Fla. v. Florida, 517 U. S. 44 (1996), as I have consistently maintained. See College Savings Bank v. Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd., 527 U. S. 666, 699–701 (1999) (dissenting opinion); Federal Maritime Comm‘n v. South Carolina Ports Authority, 535 U. S. 743, 787–788 (2002) (same). We erred again in Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd. v. College Savings Bank, 527 U. S. 627 (1999), by holding that Congress exceeded its Section 5 powers when it passed a patent counterpart to the copyright statute at issue here. See id., at 652–664 (Stevens, J., dissenting). But recognizing that my longstanding view has not carried the day, and that the Court‘s decision in Florida Prepaid controls this case, I concur in the judgment. See ante, 9–10, 15–16; Kimble v. Marvel Entertainment, LLC, 576 U. S. 446, 455–456 (2015); Franchise Tax Board of California v. Hyatt, 587 U. S. ___ (2019) (BREYER, J., dissenting).