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State Employers Are Not Sovereign: By Analogy, Transfer The Market Participant Exception To The Dormant Commerce Clause To States As Employers, Lara Gardner

Chicago-Kent Law Review

States should be treated as market participants and not be given sovereign immunity under the Eleventh Amendment when they are acting as private employers. Through an expansive reading of the Eleventh Amendment, the Supreme Court has restricted the right of state employees to sue under federal statutes intended to protect employees when the state is the employer and claims sovereign immunity. Under the market participant exception to the dormant Commerce Clause, if a state is acting as a market participant, rather than as a market regulator, it is no longer bound by the restraints of the Commerce Clause. The reasons …