Financial Oversight and Management Bd. for P. R. v. Centro De Periodismo Investigativo, Inc.

Summary

The Court, in an opinion by Justice Kagan joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito, Sotomayor, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Jackson, held that PROMESA does not categorically abrogate any sovereign immunity enjoyed by Puerto Rico’s Financial Oversight and Management Board. Assuming without deciding that Puerto Rico and the Board possess immunity in federal court, the Court concluded that PROMESA lacks the unmistakably clear statement necessary to abrogate it outside the statute’s Title III debt-restructuring provisions. The Court reversed and remanded. Justice Thomas dissented alone, arguing that the Court should decide the antecedent immunity question and affirm because the Board had not established that it possessed the state sovereign immunity it asserted.