“The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.”
The Eleventh Amendment, or Amendment XI of the United States Constitution is an Amendment that speaks to sovereign immunity.
The Eleventh Amendment was the first amendment to the United States Constitution after the Bill of Rights. It was put into the Constitution on February 7, 1795.
The Eleventh Amendment was proposed and ratified after a 1793 Supreme Court ruling, Chisholm v. Georgia. In that case, the Supreme Court declared that federal courts had the power to hear legal cases that were initiated by citizens against the states and that the states were not immune to these cases.
By adding the Eleventh Amendment into the Constitution, courts could now hear cases between a state and people from another state.
The Eleventh Amendment does not address lawsuits that are brought to court by a citizen against their own state.
However, in 1890 the Supreme Court advised that the Amendment did address the principles behind sovereign immunity and that these cases could not be brought forward.
In another Supreme Court Case, the Eleventh Amendment was used to declare that lawsuits against officials who are acting as representatives of a state can be sued in federal courts, but only if the state acts unconstitutionally.
