Torres v. Texas Department of Public Safety
The Court ruled that states cannot use sovereign immunity — the legal shield against being sued without consent — to block veterans' lawsuits under a federal law that guarantees returning servicemembers their jobs back, because states gave up that immunity when they joined the Union and agreed that federal military policy would be supreme.
The decision means that veterans who work for state employers and are denied reemployment or disability accommodation can take those states to court, and it extends a constitutional principle — that states surrendered certain sovereign rights at the founding — to cover Congress's power to build and maintain the armed forces.
How it got here: A Texas trial court denied the state's motion to dismiss; a divided intermediate Texas appellate court reversed; the Texas Supreme Court denied review; the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari after issuing its PennEast decision.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Le Roy Torres enlisted in the Army Reserves in 1989 and was deployed to Iraq in 2007. Exposure to military burn pits left him with constrictive bronchitis — a serious breathing condition — that made it impossible for him to return to his job as a Texas state trooper. When he asked the Texas Department of Public Safety to reassign him to a different role under the federal veterans' employment law known as USERRA, Texas refused and then argued it could not be sued at all.
The question before the Court
Can a veteran sue his state employer for refusing to accommodate his service-related disability under federal law, even when the state claims it cannot be sued without its consent?
The Court's answer
Yes — states cannot invoke sovereign immunity to block private lawsuits by veterans under USERRA against state employers. By ratifying the Constitution, states agreed their sovereignty would yield to federal military policy, including any litigation Congress authorizes to enforce that policy.
The Court applied the test from the prior term's PennEast decision: when a federal power is "complete in itself" — meaning states surrendered it entirely at the founding — states have no immunity to assert against it. Congress's power to raise and maintain armed forces easily meets that standard. The Constitution hands Congress sweeping, exclusive military authority across six enumerated clauses, strips states of most war-related powers, and history confirms the Founders deliberately created full federal military control after the Articles of Confederation's reliance on state cooperation nearly cost the country the Revolutionary War. Because states committed at the founding not to frustrate the federal military power, their consent to suit can never be a precondition to Congress's exercise of it.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Veterans employed by state agencies — state police, public universities, fire departments, and other state employers — can now sue in court if their state refuses to rehire them or accommodate a service-related disability after deployment. States can no longer invoke sovereign immunity to shut down such lawsuits before they begin.
What changes now
The case is sent back to the Texas Court of Appeals, which must allow Torres's USERRA lawsuit to proceed — it cannot be dismissed on sovereign immunity grounds. Torres will now have the opportunity to litigate whether the Texas Department of Public Safety violated his federal reemployment rights. More broadly, other veterans with similar claims against state employers may bring or revive suits under the same legal framework the Court confirmed today.
What this does not decide
The Court's holding is focused on the Army and Navy Clauses specifically; it does not decide whether every Article I power triggers a similar waiver of state sovereign immunity. The dissent warns the majority's "complete in itself" test is open-ended and could be extended to erode state immunity in many other areas of federal power.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Kagan
Justice Kagan wrote separately to acknowledge her prior view — that the 'plan of the Convention' sovereign immunity exception was limited to the Bankruptcy Clause — had been proved wrong by PennEast. She agreed that the war powers, even more than eminent domain, were 'complete in themselves' and transferred entirely to the federal government at the founding, making today's result a straightforward application of PennEast's logic.
Dissent — Justice Thomas
Justice Thomas argued that Alden v. Maine already definitively held — without exception — that Article I powers do not allow Congress to subject nonconsenting states to private damages suits in state courts. He contended Katz and PennEast addressed federal courts only and did not disturb Alden. He also argued the majority's 'complete in itself' test badly misreads PennEast, closely resembles the discredited approach this Court repudiated in Seminole Tribe, and creates an indeterminate standard that will steadily erode state sovereign immunity.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- Sovereign immunity generally shields states from private lawsuits without their consent. But there are built-in constitutional exceptions — including when states agreed, as part of the original constitutional design (the 'plan of the Convention'), to yield their sovereignty to a particular federal power. The question was whether Congress's power to raise and maintain the military is one such power.
- The Court applied the test from PennEast Pipeline Co. v. New Jersey (decided the prior term): a state's immunity is waived by the Constitution's structure when a federal power is 'complete in itself' — meaning states consented to the federal government exercising that power in its entirety when they ratified the Constitution. Where that is true, states have no immunity left to assert.
- The Constitution's text strongly supports treating military power as 'complete in itself': Congress receives six separate, interlocking war powers in Article I (including the power to declare war, raise armies, maintain a navy, and govern the militia), the President is made Commander in Chief, and the federal government is charged with protecting states from invasion — while states are prohibited from keeping troops or warships in peacetime and may train militia only under rules Congress prescribes.
- History reinforces completeness: the Articles of Confederation's dependence on state military quotas nearly cost the nation victory in the Revolutionary War, and correcting that failure was a driving reason the Constitutional Convention was called. The Founders gave Congress direct, unconditional control over military forces — and proposals to limit those powers at state ratifying conventions were rejected.
- An unbroken line of Supreme Court precedents confirms that state sovereignty yields to Congress's military power, from Civil War-era cases rejecting state habeas writs for soldiers, to 20th-century cases rejecting Tenth Amendment challenges to federal military laws, to modern cases upholding Congress's authority to override governors' control of the National Guard.
- Because the war powers are 'complete in themselves,' states agreed at the founding not to thwart them — which means state consent, including consent to suit, can never be a precondition to Congress's chosen exercise of those powers. USERRA's damages remedy against nonconsenting state employers is therefore constitutional.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms PennEast Pipeline Co. v. New Jersey (594 U.S. ___)
PennEast's 'complete in itself' test is confirmed as the governing standard for structural sovereign immunity waivers and extended to cover the war powers.
Limits Alden v. Maine (527 U.S. 706)
Alden's general rule that Article I doesn't let Congress authorize private state-court suits now has additional structural-waiver exceptions for complete federal powers.
Reaffirms Central Va. Community College v. Katz (546 U.S. 356)
Katz remains good law as a precedent establishing plan-of-the-Convention waiver of immunity under the Bankruptcy Clause.
Distinguishes Seminole Tribe of Fla. v. Florida (517 U.S. 44)
The commerce power at issue in Seminole Tribe is deemed less than 'complete in itself,' distinguishing it from the war powers and preserving Seminole Tribe's outcome on different logic.