Opinion of the Court
saw it, was not a harm to Arkansas sufficient for the State to sue in its own name.
We disagreed. We recognized that “Arkansas must, of course, represent an interest of her own and not merely that of her citizens or corporations.” Ibid. But we concluded that Arkansas was in fact seeking to protect its own interests because the University was “an official state instrumentality.” Ibid. The State had labeled the University “an instrument of the state in the performance of a governmental work.” Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted). The University served a public purpose, acting as the State’s “agen[t] in the educational field.” Id., at 371. The University had been “created by the Arkansas legislature,” was “governed by a Board of Trustees appointed by the Governor with consent of the Senate,” and “report[ed] all of its expenditures to the legislature.” Id., at 370. In short, the University was an instrumentality of the State, and “any injury under the contract to the University [was] an injury to Arkansas.” Ibid. So too here. Because the Authority is part of Missouri, the State does not seek to “rely on injuries suffered by others.” Post, at 2 (opinion of Kagan, J.). It aims to remedy its own.
The Secretary and the dissent assert that MOHELA’s injuries should not count as Missouri’s because MOHELA, as a public corporation, has a legal personality separate from the State. Every government corporation has such a distinct personality; it is a corporation, after all, “with the powers to hold and sell property and to sue and be sued.” First Nat. City Bank v. Banco Para el Comercio Exterior de Cuba, 462 U. S. 611, 624 (1983). Yet such an instrumentality—created and operated to fulfill a public function—nonetheless remains “(for many purposes at least) part of the Government itself.” Lebron v. National Railroad Passenger Corporation, 513 U. S. 374, 397 (1995).
In Lebron, Amtrak was sued for refusing to display a political advertisement on a billboard at one of its stations.
