Case Citator › Ford Motor Co. v. Department of Treasury

Ford Motor Co. v. Department of Treasury

Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.

Overruled in part
Court
Supreme Court of the United States
Citation
323 U.S. 459
Decided
Confirmed treatments
2
Flagged citations read
237 of 237
Citing cases (total)
1,526
Treatment dates
1976–2002
Overruled in part
A reviewed court has overruled part of this case’s holding. Ford Motor Co. v. Department of Treasury is overruled in part on Eleventh Amendment waiver by removal and limited where Congress legislates under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. All 237 flagged citations have been read.
More on how this was screened

Lapides v. Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia overruled Ford Motor insofar as it would preserve immunity after a State voluntarily removes state-law claims for which it already waived state-court immunity. Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer held that Congress may authorize private suits against States under § 5. The 2 confirmed treatments are listed below; the other citing opinions applied Ford Motor, reported another court's treatment, or addressed unrelated sovereign-immunity precedent.

Every treatment on this page is written from the citing opinion itself, with a verbatim quote, never copied from a commercial citator. A citation flagged by our screen but not shown here was read and found not to weaken this case.

1,526 later cases cite Ford Motor Co. v. Department of Treasury; 237 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading, and all of them have been read. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.

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Treatments

Overruled in Part

  • Lapides overruled Ford Motor insofar as it would preserve Eleventh Amendment immunity after a State voluntarily removes claims for which it waived immunity in state court.

    Lapides v. Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia · Supreme Court of the United States · filed

    A rule of federal law that, as in Ford, denies waiver despite the state attorney general’s state-authorized litigating decision, does the opposite. ... Finding Ford inconsistent with the basic rationale of that line of cases, we consequently overrule Ford insofar as it would otherwise apply.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

Limited

  • The Supreme Court held that Congress may authorize private suits against states under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment even though Ford Motor would bar those suits in other contexts.

    Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer · Supreme Court of the United States · filed

    But we think that the Eleventh Amendment, and the principle of state sovereignty which it embodies, see Hans v. Louisiana, 134 U. S. 1 (1890), are necessarily limited by the enforcement provisions of § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. In that section Congress is expressly granted authority to enforce “by appropriate legislation” the substantive provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment, which themselves embody significant limitations on state authority. When Congress acts pursuant to § 5, not only is it exercising legislative authority that is plenary within the terms of the constitutional grant, it is exercising that authority under one section of a constitutional Amendment whose other sections by their own terms embody limitations on state authority. We think that Congress may, in determining what is “appropriate legislation” for the purpose of enforcing the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment, provide for private suits against States or state officials which are constitutionally impermissible in other contexts.11 See Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U. S. 651 (1974); Ford Motor Co. v. Department of Treasury, 323 U. S. 459 (1945).
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

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