Will v. Michigan Department of State Police
Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.
Status
More on how this was screened
Hilton v. South Carolina Public Railways Commission and Employers Association v. United Steelworkers of America declined to extend Will's reasoning beyond its governing context. The other reviewed opinions applied Will's state-personhood and official-capacity rules, invoked its express prospective-relief exception, reported Will's treatment of another authority, or used nearby adverse language for sovereign-immunity abrogation and unrelated precedent. Simmons v. California and Best v. District of Columbia applied boundaries stated in Will itself and therefore produce no entry.
13,981 later cases cite Will v. Michigan Department of State Police; 2,222 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading; 2,212 of them have been read, and the text of 10 citing opinions could not be retrieved, so those remain unread. 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.
Relying on Will v. Michigan Department of State Police?
This page shows what later courts did to it. Ask about your specific facts and see whether it still carries your argument, with citations you can check.
Treatments
Criticized
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The Supreme Court of Colorado criticized Will for mischaracterizing the court's earlier Uberoi decision as addressing the State's § 1983 status when Uberoi addressed only the University of Colorado.
Simon v. State Compensation Insurance Authority · Supreme Court of Colorado · filed
Will mischaracterized the holding in Uberoi because Uberoi addressed only the § 1983 status of the university, not the § 1983 status of the state.
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Limited
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The Supreme Court confined Will's clear-statement reasoning to its § 1983 statutory context and rejected extending it into a categorical rule that general liability language can never reach States.
Hilton v. South Carolina Public Railways Commission · Supreme Court of the United States · filed
We think the argument misconstrues the Will decision. Will did not import the entirety of our Eleventh Amendment jurisprudence into the area of statutory construction. It treated the Eleventh Amendment as a relevant consideration. 491 U. S., at 66-67; Hafer v. Melo, 502 U. S. 21, 30 (1991). The primary focus of Will was, as it should have been, on the language and history of § 1983.
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The court declined to extend Will's anti-preemption reasoning into the federal labor-law context, holding that the specialized Machinists and Garmon doctrines governed NLRA preemption.
Employers Association v. United Steelworkers of America · D. Minn. · filed
At the outset, the Court declines to follow the non-labor law cases which disfavor implied federal preemption of state laws. See Wisconsin Public Intervenor v. Mortier, — U.S. —, —, 111 S.Ct. 2476, 2482, 115 L.Ed.2d 532 (1991); Gregory v. Ashcroft, — U.S. —, —, 111 S.Ct. 2395, 2401, 115 L.Ed.2d 410 (1991); Will v. Michigan Dept. of State Police, 491 U.S. 58, 65, 109 S.Ct. 2304, 2308, 105 L.Ed.2d 45 (1989). These cases are wholly inapposite .in the context of federal labor, law.
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