UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

┐ NEW ALBANY MAIN STREET PROPERTIES, dba Port of │ Louisville, │ Plaintiff-Appellee, │ > No. 22-5351 │ v. │ │ WATCO COMPANIES, LLC, │ Defendant, │ │ │ MARIA BOUVETTE, │ Defendant-Appellant. │ ┘

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Kentucky at Louisville. No. 3:20-cv-00343—Rebecca Grady Jennings, District Judge.

Argued: June 14, 2023

Decided and Filed: July 27, 2023

Before: SUTTON, Chief Judge; LARSEN and MURPHY, Circuit Judges. _________________

COUNSEL ARGUED: Amy D. Cubbage, TACHAU MEEK PLC, Louisville, Kentucky, for Appellant. J. Kent Wicker, WICKER / BRAMMELL, Louisville, Kentucky, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Donald L. Cox, LYNCH, COX, GILMAN & GOODMAN, PSC, Louisville, Kentucky, for Appellant. J. Kent Wicker, William H. Brammell, Jr., DRESSMAN BENZINGER LA VELLE PSC, Louisville, Kentucky, for Appellee. No. 22-5351 New Albany Main Street Props. v. Watco Companies, LLC, et al. Page 2

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OPINION _________________

MURPHY, Circuit Judge. It is well known that the U.S. Constitution incorporates the “sovereign immunity” from private lawsuits that the states possessed before the founding. This federal constitutional immunity covers claims filed against the states in federal court, see Seminole Tribe of Fla. v. Florida, 517 U.S. 44, 57–73 (1996), claims filed against them in their own courts under federal law, see Alden v. Maine, 527 U.S. 706, 730–54 (1999), and claims filed against them in another state’s courts, see Franchise Tax Bd. of Cal. v. Hyatt, 139 S. Ct. 1485, 1493–99 (2019).

But a state’s sovereign immunity does not end with the federal Constitution. When a plaintiff pursues state claims against state defendants, these defendants may also invoke the state’s own common-law or constitutional rules of sovereign immunity. In this case, we must consider Kentucky’s sovereign-immunity law, which grants “pure” immunity to some state actors and “governmental” immunity to others. To help develop ports, Kentucky gives its localities the power to create riverport authorities. The plaintiff in this case brought state claims against a riverport authority’s executive director. The district court held that Kentucky would not grant sovereign immunity to this director when sued in her official capacity. We reverse because she is entitled to Kentucky’s “governmental” form of sovereign immunity.

I

A

The term “port” comes from the Latin word “porta,” which means “gate or gateway.” Marvin L. Fair, Port Authorities in the United States, 26 L. & Contemp. Probs. 703, 703 (1961). Ports thus have long been described as the “gates of the re