Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/359

 502us1$16L 08-21-96 15:27:13 PAGES OPINPGT

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

201

Opinion of the Court

state court under 42 U. S. C. § 1983 against Michigan state officials. We held that a State is not a “person” as that term is used in § 1983, and is not suable under the statute, regardless of the forum where the suit is maintained. In so holding, we relied in part on the lack of any “clear statement” in the statute of a congressional intent to impose liability on the State. In its Freeman decision that controlled its ruling in the instant case, the South Carolina court read Will to hold that a statute will not be interpreted to create a cause of action for money damages against a State unless it contains “unmistakably clear language” showing that Congress intended to do so. Deciding that the text of FELA does not have language conforming to this standard, the Freeman court held that FELA does not subject the States to liability. When petitioner’s case reached the South Carolina Supreme Court, it affirmed dismissal of the action in a onesentence per curiam opinion, citing Freeman. We granted certiorari, 498 U. S. 1081 (1991), and now reverse. II Our analysis and ultimate determination in this case are controlled and informed by the central importance of stare decisis in this Court’s jurisprudence. Respondent asks us to overrule a 28-year-old interpretation, first enunciated in Parden, that when Congress enacted FELA and used the phrase “[e]very common carrier by railroad,” 45 U. S. C. § 51, to describe the class of employers subject to its terms, it intended to include state-owned railroads. 377 U. S., at 187– 188.1 Just two Terms ago, in Port Authority Trans-Hudson Corp. v. Feeney, 495 U. S. 299 (1990), we assumed the applicability of FELA to state-owned railroads in finding that the defendant, a bistate compact corporation, had waived any 1 Section 1 of FELA, 45 U. S. C. § 51, in pertinent part, provides: “Every common carrier by railroad while engaging in commerce. . . shall be liable in damages to any person suffering injury while he is employed by such carrier in such commerce. . . .”