Wisconsin Department of Corrections, et al. v. Keith D. Schacht (524 U.S. 381)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided June 22, 1998 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 524 U.S. 381 · 118 S. Ct. 2047
- Decided
- June 22, 1998
- Term
- October Term 1997
- Vote
- 9–0
- Majority author
- Justice Breyer
- Issue area
- Judicial Power
- Disposition
- Vacated and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Justice Breyer delivered the opinion of the Court. The question before us is whether defendants in a case filed in a state court, with claims “arising under” federal law, can remove that case to federal court — where some claims, made against a State, are subject to an Eleventh Amendment bar. We conclude that the defendants can remove the ease to a federal court and that the court can decide the nonbarred claims. I In 1993, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections dismissed Keith Schacht, a prison guard, for stealing items from the Oakhill Correctional Institution, a state prison. In January 1996, Schacht filed a complaint in state court against the Department and several of its employees, both in their “personal” and in their “official” capacities. The complaint, in several different claims, alleged that the Department and its employees had deprived Schacht of “liberty” and “property” without “due process of law,” thereby violating the Federal Constitution and civil rights laws. U. S. Const., Arndt. 14, § 1; Rev. Stat. § 1979, 42 ü. S. C. § 198S. The defendants immediately removed the case to federal court. The defendants’ answer, filed in federal court, in part raised as a “defense” that the “eleventh amendment to the United States Constitution, and the doctrine of sovereign immunity, bars any claim under 42 U. S. C. § 1983 against” the State itself, namely, the “defendant…
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