The Eleventh Amendment to the constitution deprives federal courts of jurisdiction to hear lawsuits which are filed by citizens against any state. This extends to any agency of the state. This immunity is particularly harmful to Copyright owners when damages are sought, because the Copyright Act confers exclusive jurisdiction for such claims in federal court. Thus, the Copyright Act precludes suits seeking damages for copyright infringement in state court. Therefore, copyright infringement claims seeking monetary damages cannot be pursued in either federal or state court!

Congress has tried to get around this dilemma by amending the Copyright Act to authorize such a suit. However, two recent cases in Texas, Chavez vs. Arte Publico Press, and Rodrigues vs. Texas Commission on the Arts, have held that Congress does not have the constitutional power to grant this type of jurisdiction to the federal courts.

This constitutional restriction applies only to monetary damages, since states may still be sued in federal court for injunctive relief. This means you can stop a state from infringing your work, but you cannot collect damages. Accordingly, until or unless the law is modified, when dealing with a state entity you should take particular care to insure that your contracts contain provisions which will override these concerns.