Allen v. Cooper - 140 S. Ct. 994 (2020)

Rule:

For an abrogation statute to be “appropriate” under U.S. Const. amend. 14, § 5, it must be tailored to “remedy or prevent” conduct infringing the Fourteenth Amendment’s substantive prohibitions. Congress can permit suits against States for actual violations of the rights guaranteed in U.S. Const. amend. 14, § 1. And to deter those violations, it can allow suits against States for a somewhat broader swath of conduct, including acts constitutional in themselves. But Congress cannot use its “power to enforce” the Fourteenth Amendment to alter what that Amendment bars. Congress is prohibited from “substantively redefining” the Fourteenth Amendment’s requirements. That means a congressional abrogation is valid under Section 5 only if it sufficiently connects to conduct courts have held Section 1 to proscribe. 

Facts:

In 1996, a marine salvage company named Intersal, Inc., discovered the shipwreck of the Queen Anne's Revenge off the North Carolina coast. North Carolina, the shipwreck's legal owner, contracted with Intersal to conduct recovery operations. Intersal, in turn, hired videographer Frederick Allen to document the efforts. Allen recorded videos and took photos of the recovery for more than a decade. He registered copyrights in all of his works. When North Carolina published some of Allen's videos and photos online, Allen sued for copyright infringement. North Carolina moved to dismiss the lawsuit on the ground of state sovereign immunity. Allen countered that the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act of 1990 (CRCA) removed the States' sovereign immunity in copyright infringement cases. The District Court agreed with Allen, finding in the CRCA's text a clear congressional intent to abrogate state sovereign immunity and a proper constitutional basis for that abrogation. The court acknowledged that Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd. v. College Savings Bank, 527 U. S. 627, 119 S. Ct. 2199, 144 L. Ed. 2d 575, precluded Congress from using its Article I powers--including its authority over copyrights--to deprive States of sovereign immunity. But the court held that Congress could accomplish its objective under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Fourth Circuit reversed, reading Florida Prepaid to prevent recourse to both Article I and Section 5.

Issue:

Does Congress have authority to abrogate the States' immunity from copyright infringement suits in the CRCA?

Answer:

No

Conclusion:

The Court held that under United States Supreme Court precedent that the Intellectual Property Clause, U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 8, could not provide the basis for an abrogation of sovereign immunity under the Patent and Plant Variety Protection Clarification Act, the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act of 1990 (CRCA), 17 U.S.C.S. §§ 511 and 501(a), failed the “congruence and proportionality” test. The evidence of Fourteenth Amendment injury was exceedingly slight, and the scope of the statute extended to every infringement case against a State. The CRCA aimed to provide a uniform remedy for statutory infringement, rather than redress or prevent unconstitutional conduct, and so, the law was invalid under U.S. Const. amend. 14, § 5. The power to “secure” an intellectual property owner’s “exclusive right” under the Intellectual Properly Clause, stopped when it ran into sovereign immunity.