Cooper is whether Congress validly abrogated state sovereign immunity in the 1990 Copyright Remedy Clarification Act. After the creator sued, North Carolina invoked the Supreme Court’s Seminole Tribe (1996) ruling that held Congress’s Article I powers generally don’t trump state sovereign immunity. In Florida Prepaid (1999) the Court also said Congress could not use its Article I powers to abrogate state immunity against patent infringement. For instance, Congress may override state sovereign immunity under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which gives it power to enforce due-process rights. Prior to passing the 1990 law, Congress documented a pattern of willful state copyright infringement.

Source: Wall Street Journal November 04, 2019 23:41 UTC