Fair Labor Standards Act – Exceptions to 11th Amendment Immunity

Listen to this article

7^TH Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Arlene Nunez et al v. Indiana Department of Child Services

Case No.: 15-2800

Officials: BAUER, FLAUM, and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges

Focus: Fair Labor Standards Act – Exceptions to 11^th Amendment Immunity

1998 amendment to Title 34 of Indiana Code did not waive State immunity from federal-court jurisdiction.

“This argument runs into three problems, each of which would be sufficient to reject it. First, application of the FLSA to state employees was not settled in 1998, as shown by the Supreme Court’s decision in Alden v. Maine, 527 U.S. 706 (1999), which held under the Eleventh Amendment that Congress could not subject states to FLSA suits even in state courts without the states’ consent. Second, the argument again relies on an erroneous presumption in favor of waiver. States must explicitly waive sovereign immunity, not explicitly preserve it. Finally, the argument reads far too much into the 1998 re‐ codification of Title 34 of the Indiana Code dealing with civil procedure. Public Law 1‐1998 was intended to recodify existing law, not to change substantive law, and certainly not to do anything as substantive as implicitly waive the state’s Eleventh Amendment immunity. See Ind. Code § 34‐7‐1‐4 (instructions on how to construe recodification act of 1998); Cheri A. Harris, Cleaning House in Title 34: Recodification of the Civil Code of 1881, Res Gestae, April 1998, at 26 (“An effort is made to resolve ambiguities in current law whenever possible, but with the condition that no substantive changes are to be made in the law.”). The recodification of the older statute of limitations did not indicate any deliberate choice by the state to waive the protections of the Eleventh Amendment.”

Affirmed

Full Text

Attorney Derek A. Hawkins is the managing partner at Hawkins Law Offices LLC, where he heads up the firm’s startup law practice. He specializes in business formation, corporate governance, intellectual property protection, private equity and venture capital funding and mergers & acquisitions. Check out the website at www.hawkins-lawoffices.com or contact them at 262-737-8825.