Will v. Michigan Department of State Police, 491 U.S. 58 (1989)

E403306

Will v. Michigan Department of State Police, 491 U.S. 58 (1989), is a U.S. Supreme Court decision holding that neither a State nor its officials acting in their official capacities are “persons” subject to damages liability under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.

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All labels observed (1)

Statements (36)

Predicate Object
instanceOf Section 1983 case
U.S. Supreme Court decision
United States Supreme Court case
federal civil rights case
areaOfLaw civil rights law
constitutional law
federal courts and jurisdiction
sovereign immunity
citation 491 U.S. 58
citationStyle United States Reports
clarifies that § 1983 does not abrogate state sovereign immunity for damages suits
country United States of America
surface form: United States
court Supreme Court of the United States
decisionDate 1989
effect distinguishes between official-capacity and individual-capacity suits under § 1983
limits damages actions under § 1983 against States
limits damages actions under § 1983 against state officials in their official capacities
firstPage 58
holding a State is not a “person” subject to damages liability under 42 U.S.C. § 1983
state officials acting in their official capacities are not “persons” subject to damages liability under 42 U.S.C. § 1983
state officials sued in their official capacities for damages are not subject to suit under § 1983
jurisdiction federal question jurisdiction
languageOfDecision English
legalIssue whether a State is a “person” under 42 U.S.C. § 1983
whether state officials sued in their official capacities are “persons” under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for damages
petitioner Will
relatedDoctrine Eleventh Amendment immunity
Section 1983 “person” requirement
official-capacity suits
state sovereign immunity
reporter United States of America
surface form: U.S.
reporterVolume 491
respondent Michigan State Police
surface form: Michigan Department of State Police
statuteInterpreted 42 U.S.C. § 1983
term October Term 1988
yearDecided 1989

How these facts were elicited

The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.

Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10.

# Requirements
- If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list.
- If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list.
- Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf".
- Do not get too wordy.
- Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: Will v. Michigan Department of State Police, 491 U.S. 58 (1989)
Description of subject: Will v. Michigan Department of State Police, 491 U.S. 58 (1989), is a U.S. Supreme Court decision holding that neither a State nor its officials acting in their official capacities are “persons” subject to damages liability under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.

Referenced by (1)

Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.

42 U.S.C. § 1983 interpretedBy Will v. Michigan Department of State Police, 491 U.S. 58 (1989)