Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/364

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HILTON v. SOUTH CAROLINA PUBLIC RAILWAYS COMM’N Opinion of the Court

conclusion is evident from our discussions in EEOC v. Wyoming, 460 U. S. 226, 244, n. 18 (1983), and in Gregory v. Ashcroft, 501 U. S. 452, 470 (1991), last Term. Both cases describe the plain statement rule as “a rule of statutory construction to be applied where statutory intent is ambiguous,” ibid., rather than as a rule of constitutional law; and neither case implicated the Eleventh Amendment. The distinction we draw is also supported by the Court’s decision in Welch, and in particular by the fact that Welch in explicit terms reserved the statutory construction issue we resolve today. 483 U. S., at 476, n. 6. When the issue to be resolved is one of statutory construction, of congressional intent to impose monetary liability on the States, the requirement of a clear statement by Congress to impose such liability creates a rule that ought to be of assistance to the Congress and the courts in drafting and interpreting legislation. The requirement also serves to make parallel two separate inquiries into state liability: Eleventh Amendment doctrine and canons of statutory interpretation. In most cases, as in Will and Gregory v. Ashcroft, the rule can be followed. The resulting symmetry, making a State’s liability or immunity, as the case may be, the same in both federal and state courts, has much to commend it. It also avoids the federalism-related concerns that arise when the National Government uses the state courts as the exclusive forum to permit recovery under a congressional statute. This is not an inconsequential argument. Symmetry in the law is more than esthetics. It is predictability and order. But symmetry is not an imperative that must override just expectations which themselves rest upon the predictability and order of stare decisis. In the case before us the clear statement inquiry need not be made and we need not decide whether FELA satisfies that standard, for the rule in any event does not prevail over the doctrine of stare decisis as applied to a longstanding