WASHINGTON, May 13 (UPI) -- The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that when a state moves a case from its own courts to federal court it waives 11th Amendment immunity from lawsuits.
Paul Lapides is a professor employed by the Georgia state university system.
Lapides filed suit against that system and university officials, however, when he discovered that the officials had put sexual harassment allegations into his personnel files.
The professor claimed the insertion of the complaints into his file violated Georgia case law and federal civil rights law.
The defendants moved to transfer the case from state court to federal court.
Once there, the defendants conceded that Georgia law waves sovereign immunity from state-law suits in state court.
But since the case had been moved to federal court, the defendants argued that the 11th Amendment gave them immunity from lawsuit.
Normally, the Supreme Court has agreed that the 11th Amendment gives the states and its officials "qualified immunity" from liability in a lawsuit.
But Monday, the unanimous opinion written by Justice Stephen Breyer said that since the state had transferred the case from its own court to federal court, it had in effect waived that immunity.
Breyer warned that the federal judge "may well find that this case, now raising only state-law issues, should nonetheless be remanded to the state courts for determination."
(No. 01-298, Lapides vs. Board of Regents et al)
