Allen v. Cooper

140 S. Ct. 994 (2020)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

In 1717, the pirate Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, captured a French slave ship in the West Indies and renamed her Queen Anne’s Revenge. The vessel became his flagship. In 1718, the ship ran aground on a sandbar a mile off Beaufort, North Carolina. She sank beneath the waters, where she lay undisturbed for nearly 300 years. Intersal, Inc. discovered her in 1996. Under federal and state law, the wreck belongs to D. The State contracted with Intersal to take charge of the recovery activities. Intersal retained P, a local videographer, to document the operation. For over a decade, P created videos and photos of divers’ efforts to salvage the Revenge’s guns, anchors, and other remains. He registered copyrights in all those works. D took P's work and published it without P's permission. D agreed to a settlement paying P $15,000 and laying out the parties’ respective rights to the materials. P complained that D had impermissibly posted five of his videos online and used one of his photos in a newsletter. D declined to admit wrongdoing, P filed this action in Federal District Court charging D with copyright infringement (call it a modern form of piracy) and seeks money damages. D moved to dismiss the suit on sovereign immunity. It invoked the general rule that federal courts cannot hear suits brought by individuals against nonconsenting States. P responded that Congress had abrogated the States’ sovereign immunity from suits like his. The Copyright Remedy Clarification Act of 1990 (CRCA or Act) provides that a State “shall not be immune, under the Eleventh Amendment [or] any other doctrine of sovereign immunity, from suit in Federal court” for copyright infringement. The District Court agreed with P. The court held that Florida Prepaid precluded Congress from using its Article I powers-including its authority over copyrights-to take away a State’s sovereign immunity. But in the court’s view, Florida Prepaid left open an alternative route to abrogation. Given the States’ “pattern” of “abusive” copyright infringement, the court held, Congress could accomplish its object under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed. It read Florida Prepaid to prevent recourse to Section 5 as well. The Fourth Circuit stated it must be “congruent and proportional” to the Fourteenth Amendment injury it seeks to remedy. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.