Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/357

 502us1$16L 08-21-96 15:27:12 PAGES OPINPGT

Cite as: 502 U. S. 197 (1991)

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Opinion of the Court

Keating L. Simons III argued the cause and filed a brief for respondent.* Justice Kennedy delivered the opinion of the Court. In this case we must decide whether the Federal Employers’ Liability Act (FELA), 53 Stat. 1404, 45 U. S. C. §§ 51–60, creates a cause of action against a state-owned railroad, enforceable in state court. We hold that it does, reaffirming in part our decision in Parden v. Terminal Railway of Alabama Docks Dept., 377 U. S. 184 (1964). I Petitioner Kenneth Hilton was an employee of the South Carolina Public Railways Commission. The commission, which has some 300 employees, is a common carrier engaged in interstate commerce by railroad and is an agency of the State of South Carolina, having been created by statute in 1969. Hilton alleges he was injured in the scope and course of his employment and that the negligence of the commission was the cause of the accident. In the case now before us the commission is the respondent. To recover for his injuries, petitioner first filed a FELA action in United States District Court. That case was pending when we announced our decision in Welch v. Texas Dept. of Highways and Public Transportation, 483 U. S. 468 (1987), which held that the Jones Act, § 33, 41 Stat. 1007, 46 U. S. C. App. § 688, does not abrogate the States’ Eleventh Amendment immunity. The Jones Act incorporates the remedial scheme of FELA; and, based on his understanding that Eleventh Amendment immunity from Jones Act suits would apply as well to FELA, petitioner dismissed his for the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations as amicus curiae urging reversal. Richard Ruda filed a brief for the National Governors’ Association et al. as amici curiae urging affirmance.
 * Robert M. Weinberg, Walter Kamiat, and Laurence Gold filed a brief