172857P.pdf   01/10/2019  Shondel Church  v.  State of Missouri
   U.S. Court of Appeals Case No:  17-2857
   U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri - Jefferson City   
   [PUBLISHED] [Benton, Author, with Gruender and Melloy, Circuit Judges] 
   Civil case - Class Actions. In this class action against the State and 
   governor of Missouri and the director and commissioners of the State 
   Public Defender Office alleging they were failing to meet their 
   constitutional obligation to provide indigent defendants with meaningful 
   representations by failing to adequately fund and staff the office, 
   Missouri did not waive its general state sovereignty by removing this 
   action from state to federal court; the court believes the Missouri 
   Supreme Court would apply long-established principles of sovereign 
   immunity to determine that the State was immune from cases involving 
   prospective equitable relief; neither the "consent" nor the "proprietary 
   function" exceptions to sovereign immunity applied; while Congress may 
   abrogate state sovereign immunity by providing an enforcement mechanism 
   for a constitutional violation, no such enforcement mechanism exists here; 
   the district court erred in denying the governor's motion for summary 
   judgment based on sovereign immunity; to the extent plaintiffs claim that 
   the governor's general enforcement authority and appointment authority are 
   non-legislative acts that lead to a constitutional violation, the governor 
   has sovereign immunity for those acts because they do not satisfy Ex Parte 
   Young; even if the governor's appropriation-reduction authority is not 
   shielded by sovereign immunity through Ex Parte Young, legislative 
   immunity forecloses suit against him.