Syllabus
(1) Under the doctrine of sovereign immunity, named defendants Penny Clarkston (a state-court clerk) and Austin Jackson (a state-court judge) should be dismissed. The petitioners have explained that they hope to certify a class and request an order enjoining all state-court clerks from docketing S. B. 8 cases, and all state-court judges from hearing them. The difficulty with this theory of relief is that States are generally immune from suit under the terms of the Eleventh Amendment or the doctrine of sovereign immunity. While the Court in Ex parte Young, 209 U. S. 123, did recognize a narrow exception allowing an action to prevent state officials from enforcing state laws that are contrary to federal law, that exception is grounded in traditional equity practice. Id., at 159–160. And as Ex parte Young itself explained, this traditional exception does not normally permit federal courts to issue injunctions against state-court judges or clerks. The traditional remedy against such actors has been some form of appeal, not an ex ante injunction preventing courts from hearing cases. As stated in Ex parte Young, “an injunction against a state court” or its “machinery” “would be a violation of the whole scheme of our Government.” Id., at 163. The petitioners’ clerk-and-court theory thus fails under Ex parte Young.
It fails for the additional reason that no Article III “case or controversy” between “adverse litigants” exists between the petitioners who challenge S. B. 8 and either the state-court clerks who may docket disputes against the petitioners or the state-court judges who decide those disputes. Muskrat v. United States, 219 U. S. 346, 361; see Pulliam v. Allen, 466 U. S. 522, 538, n. 18. Further, as to remedy, Article III does not confer on federal judges the power to supervise governmental operations. The petitioners offer no meaningful limiting principle that would apply if federal judges could enjoin state-court judges and clerks from entertaining disputes under S. B. 8. And if the state-court judges and clerks qualify as “adverse litigants” for Article III purposes in the present case, when would they not? Many more questions than answers would present themselves if the Court journeyed the way of the petitioners’ theory. Pp. 4–9.
