3rd defense: Plaintiff's claims are barred by the doctrine of sovereign immunity.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity)
United StatesMain article:
Sovereign immunity in the United StatesIn the
United States, the
federal government has sovereign immunity and may not be sued unless it has waived its immunity or consented to suit. The United States has waived sovereign immunity to a limited extent, mainly through the
Federal Tort Claims Act, which waives the immunity if a
tortious act of a federal employee causes damage, and the
Tucker Act, which waives the immunity over claims arising out of contracts to which the federal government is a party.[
edit] State sovereign immunityIn
Hans v. Louisiana (1890), the
Supreme Court of the United States held that the
Eleventh Amendment (1795) re-affirms that states possess sovereign immunity and are therefore generally immune from being sued in federal court without their consent. In later cases, the Supreme Court has strengthened state sovereign immunity considerably. In
Blatchford v. Native Village of Noatak (1991), the court explained that<blockquote>we have understood the Eleventh Amendment to stand not so much for what it says, but for the presupposition of our constitutional structure which it confirms: that the States entered the federal system with their sovereignty intact; that the judicial authority in Article III is limited by this sovereignty, and that a State will therefore not be subject to suit in federal court unless it has consented to suit, either expressly or in the "plan of the convention." [Citations omitted.]</blockquote>In
Alden v. Maine (1999), the Court explained that while it has<blockquote>sometimes referred to the States’ immunity from suit as "Eleventh Amendment immunity[,]" [that] phrase is [a] convenient shorthand but something of a misnomer, [because] the sovereign immunity of the States neither derives from nor is limited by the terms of the Eleventh Amendment. Rather, as the Constitution's structure, and its history, and the authoritative interpretations by this Court make clear, the States’ immunity from suit is a fundamental aspect of the sovereignty which the States enjoyed before the ratification of the Constitution, and which they retain today (either literally or by virtue of their admission into the Union upon an equal footing with the other States) except as altered by the plan of the Convention or certain constitutional Amendments.</blockquote>Writing for the court in
Alden, Justice
Anthony Kennedy argued that in view of this, and given the limited nature of congressional power delegated by the original unamended Constitution, the court could not "conclude that the specific Article I powers delegated to Congress necessarily include, by virtue of the Necessary and Proper Clause or otherwise, the incidental authority to subject the States to private suits as a means of achieving objectives otherwise within the scope of the enumerated powers."
However, a "consequence of [the] Court's recognition of pre-ratification sovereignty as the source of immunity from suit is that
only States and
arms of the State possess immunity from suits authorized by federal law."
Northern Insurance Company of New York v. Chatham County (2006 emphases added). Thus, cities and municipalities lack sovereign immunity,
Jinks v. Richland County (2003), and counties are not generally considered to have sovereign immunity, even when they "exercise a 'slice of state power.'"
Lake Country Estates, Inc. v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (1979).
4th defense: 11th amendment, the defendants are immune in federal court regarding plaintiff's claims.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleventh_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution)
The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.
5th defense: Plaintiff's claims against the guvnah are barred by qualified immunity.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity)Qualified immunity is a doctrine in U.S. federallaw that arises in cases brought against state officials under 42 U.S.CSection 1983 and against federal officials under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents, 403 U.S. 388 (1971). Qualified immunity shields government officials from liability for the violation of an individual's federal constitutional rights. This grant of immunity is available to state or federal employees performing discretionary functions where their actions, even if later found to be unlawful, did not violate "clearly established law." The defense of qualified immunity was created by the U.S. Supreme Court, replacing a court's inquiry into a defendant's subjective state of mind with an inquiry into the objective reasonableness of the contested action. A government agent's liability in a federal civil rights lawsuit now no longer turns upon whether the defendant acted with "malice," but on whether a hypothetical reasonable person in the defendant's position would have known that his/her actions violated clearly established law.As outlined by the Supreme Court in Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800 (1982),[1] qualified immunity is designed to shield government officials from actions "insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known."In 2001, the Supreme Court in Saucier v. Katz established a rigid order in which courts must decide the merits of a defendant's qualified immunity defense. First, the court determines whether the complaint states a constitutional violation. If so, the next sequential step is to determine whether the right at issue was clearly established at the time of the official's conduct. The Court subsequently overruled Saucier in Pearson v. Callahan, holding that the two-step procedure was no longer mandatory.