89 Geo. Wash. L. Rev

\\jciprod01\productn\G\GWN\89-3\GWN302.txt unknown Seq: 1 12-MAY-21 13:47 War Powers Abrogation Jeffrey M. Hirsch* ABSTRACT The United States’ peacetime security is based entirely on its all-volunteer armed forces. These volunteers, split equally between full- and part-time servicemembers, risk not only their health and safety, but also their economic stability when they are called away from home for training or active duty. Servicemembers’ duties also interfere with the demands of employers, credi- tors, and government agencies—which can result in job losses, financial diffi- culties, and other costs. As a result, the federal government has long used its constitutional war powers to enact legislation protecting servicemembers from many of these hardships. These statutes provide employment leave and an- tidiscrimination protection, tax relief, and special procedural rights that lessen the burden of military service to ensure that the United States has a sufficient number of well-trained soldiers. Despite these statutes’ importance to national security, their applicability to state entities is in doubt. Using the Supreme Court’s fluctuating state sovereign immunity jurisprudence, many state employers have invoked sovereign immunity to bar servicemembers’ private claims for monetary relief. More often than not, courts have sided with the states and dismissed servicemembers’ federal claims for want of jurisdiction. However, these decisions are based on erroneous interpretations of the Court’s doctrine of sovereign immunity. Under current law, the federal government’s ability to subject states to individual suits is analyzed from a historical perspective. The inquiry asks whether the states, in ratifying the Constitution, believed that they retained immunity in a given area. Based on misinterpretations of Court doctrine and a refusal to apply the required historical analysis, many courts have held that states are immune from claims filed under federal war powers legislation. This Article provides the first comprehensive historical analysis of the constitutional balance of war powers between the federal and state governments. This analysis unequivocally shows that the Constitution was intended to provide the federal government with virtually all war powers. Moreover, the Constitution requires that the very limited war powers left to the states must be entirely under the control of the federal government. As a result of this history, the federal government has constitutional authority to subject states to suit through “war powers abrogation.” * Geneva Yeargan Rand Distinguished Professor, University of North Carolina School of Law. Thanks is owed to John Coyle, Andrew Hessick, Carissa Hessick, and participants at the 14th Annual Colloquium on Scholarship in Employment and Labor Law for their helpful input. This Article benefitted greatly from the extraordinary research efforts of Kemper Patton. May 2021 Vol. 89 No. 3 593 \\jciprod01\productn\G\GWN\89-3\GWN302.txt unknown Seq: 2 12-MAY-21 13:47 594 THE GEORGE WASHINGTON LAW REVIEW [Vol. 89:593 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ................................................. 594 R I. A HISTORY OF THE SUPREME COURT’S SHIFTING APPROACH TO STATE SOVEREIGN IMMUNITY ........... 600 R A. State Sovereign Immunity: The First 200 Years ...... 601 R B. The Abandoned Chronological Analysis: Seminole Tribe and the Dangerous Dictum ................... 605 R C. The Current Historical Analysis: Alden v. Maine . 608 R D. The Post-Alden Historical Analysis: Disregarding the Dangerous Dictum .................................. 612 R II. STATES LACK SOVEREIGN IMMUNITY AGAINST FEDERAL WAR POWERS ACTIONS ...................... 616 R A. History and Structure of the Constitution............ 617 R 1. Confederation War Powers ..................... 619 R 2. Plan of the Constitutional Convention .......... 622 R 3. Text and Structure of the Constitution.......... 626 R 4. Ratification Debates ............................ 630 R a. Balance of War Powers ..................... 631 R b. State Immunity under the Constitution ...... 642 R B. Practice and Precedent Following Constitution ...... 646 R III. OBJECTIONS TO WAR POWERS ABROGATION ........... 656 R A. Article I Dictum .................................... 657 R B. Distinguishing Katz ................................. 658 R 1. The (Mostly) In Rem Nature of Bankruptcy Jurisdiction ......................... 659 R 2. The Bankruptcy Clause’s “Uniform Laws” Policy ......................... 661 R 3. The Application of Katz in State Court ........ 662 R C. The Necessary and Proper Clause ................... 663 R D. States Will Comply with Federal Law Despite Sovereign Immunity ................................. 664 R CONCLUSION ................................................... 665 R INTRODUCTION Conflicts involving military matters are not new. In the United States, great political and societal schisms formed during the Vietnam War. More recently, the country has been sharply divided over the use of U.S. military personnel in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria.1 But there 1 See BRIAN MICHAEL JENKINS, RAND CORP., HOW THE CURRENT CONFLICTS ARE SHAPING THE FUTURE OF SYRIA AND IRAQ 23–24 (2015), https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspec- tives/PE163.html [https://perma.cc/NYF4-2F7V]. \\jciprod01\productn\G\GWN\89-3\GWN302.txt unknown Seq: 3 12-MAY-21 13:47 2021] WAR POWERS ABROGATION 595 is an underanalyzed fault line: divisions between the federal and state governments. Although a central feature of the Constitution is the centralization of war powers in the federal government, states have attempted to interfere with that authority in the past and continue to do so now. The extent to which this interference continues hinges in many cases on an unexpected legal doctrine: state sovereign immunity. Some state conflicts with federal war powers implicate the federal government’s ability to call state militias into federal service. Imagine a governor objecting to the Iraq War or conflict in Syria and trying to block state National Guard members from being called into federal military service—acts that have occurred before.2 Other forms of interference are less extreme, at least in isolation, such as state interference with soldiers’ federal employment and residency rights. The United States has long relied upon all-volunteer armed forces for its peacetime defenses. To encourage participation in the military, the federal government has enacted several pieces of legislation that grant servicemembers protections in employment, taxes, and other matters. Despite these protections, the all-volunteer system can make it difficult to ensure a sufficient number of servicemembers are enlisted. In recent years, for instance, as the United States’ involve- ment in overseas conflicts has remained significant, the military’s ability to recruit and retain soldiers has been described as a “crisis.”3 Exacerbating this crisis is the fact that numerous servicemembers have alleged that state employers and other officials have been violating their federal rights. Whether due to hostility to military service or an attempt to avoid the costs associated with these protections, state ac- tors have refused to comply with federal law encouraging military service. These violations undermine the goal of these laws—to strengthen the nation’s security—and harm the servicemembers in- volved. Many servicemembers have been unable to sue states for monetary damages, even though the federal statutes, enacted pursu- ant to Congress’s constitutional war powers, explicitly permit them to do so. The problem is judicial interpretation of the Supreme Court’s state sovereign immunity jurisprudence. A confusing jurisprudence, to be sure, but one that this Article demonstrates should not allow states 2 See infra notes 393–94. R 3 Todd South, Rising Costs, Dwindling Recruit Numbers, Increasing Demands May Bring Back the Military Draft, MIL. TIMES (Nov. 19, 2019), https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your- military/2019/11/19/rising-costs-dwindling-recruit-numbers-increasing-demands-may-bring-back- the-draft [https://perma.cc/VG9T-D4NS]. \\jciprod01\productn\G\GWN\89-3\GWN302.txt unknown Seq: 4 12-MAY-21 13:47 596 THE GEORGE WASHINGTON LAW REVIEW [Vol. 89:593 to thwart federal war power efforts with claims of state sovereign immunity. Over the last several decades, scholarly commentary on state sovereign immunity has been quite robust, tracking a sharp spike in inter- est by the Supreme Court in the 1990s. But commentary on “war powers abrogation”4—the federal government’s ability to subject individual states to suit—has been an exception.5 It is not entirely clear why this is so, although the prevalence of lower-stakes claims that at- tract less litigation and an erroneous assumption that Supreme Court precedent has already answered the question may be to blame. Whatever the reason, the lack of attention to war powers abrogation is belied by its importance. This issue not only goes to one of the most fundamental aspects of the Constitution—responsibility for the nation’s security—but also determines whether states can undermine the federal government’s ability to recruit and retain servicemembers through sovereign immunity claims.6 And there are a lot of servicemembers. As of 2018, the United States had approximately 2.1 million soldiers, split almost evenly between active and non-active duty.7 Perhaps for this reason, attention to war powers abrogation is on the rise. The Court recently sought the Solicitor

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