Cities and counties don’t have sovereign immunity. Sovereign immunity is a holdover from Britain, where you couldn’t sue the ruler or any of their assets. Because states started out viewing themselves as independent countries, sovereign immunity was extended to them by courts. Smaller governments have never had sovereign immunity.
Totally incorrect. The courts didn't and can't grant the States sovereignty. They were sovereign states before entering the union and they relinquished some of their sovereign powers by signing the constitution, but certainly not all of them, or indeed any at all that aren't explicitly enumerated in the constitution.
> Totally incorrect. The courts didn't and can't grant the States sovereignty. They were sovereign states before entering the union and they relinquished some of their sovereign powers by signing the constitution
The original 13 colonies, Vermont and Texas were all independent sovereign states before joining the United States as states. However, the other 35 states were federal territories to which Congress granted statehood. Whatever sovereignty they have was given to them by the United States Congress, acting under the United States Constitution, it did not in any way pre-exist the Constitution.
(Hawaii was an independent sovereign state before being annexed into a US territory after a US-backed coup; to the extent that the present state of Hawaii has "sovereignty", it is unclear what relationship that had to the sovereignty of the independent Kingdom of Hawaii.)
I wondered if we'd see this quibble. The constitution explicitly says that the newly created states are "on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever" which obviously means they must have the same sovereignty. Yes, nearly all of the subsequent states after the first thirteen came into existence as sovereign states and joined the union simultaneously as part of a single process, but those remain distinct events.
Consider Brexit. When the UK wanted to leave, the EU said "we are sad to see you go, please reconsider, but if you really want out, we can't stop you". There was some negotiation over the terms of leaving, but there was never any doubt that the UK had the right to do so. And it was always made clear that if agreement could not be reached on the terms of leaving, the UK would leave anyway, under "default" or "no deal" terms that would be rather unsatisfactory to both sides. (Prior to 2009’s Treaty of Lisbon, the EU treaties didn’t officially permit withdrawal, but almost certainly if some state had sought to withdraw pre-2009, they would have amended the treaties to allow it.)
By contrast, the mainstream position is that US states are not allowed to leave – at least not without the consent of the federal level (Congress), and many say it would even require a constitutional amendment (which would mean the consent of most of the other states would be required as well). So there is a very clear sense in which EU member states are sovereign (they are free to leave) but the US states are not (they have to ask permission to leave, which may well be denied.)
The Civil War really settled this when a group of states tried to leave and their attempt was forcibly suppressed. Now, what complicates the matter is their reason for leaving was to protect the utterly odious and reprehensible institution of race-based slavery. But, there is no necessary connection between the issues of slavery and secession, it is just a historical accident the two got linked.
Some people who opposed secession, and supported the Union side in the War, did so primarily because of their opposition to slavery. And if you imagine some alternative history in which a group of states (whether the same group or a different one) seceded over some other more defensible issue, many of those people might have not opposed secession, or at least not so strongly. But, on the other hand, other people who supported the Union side, their primary concern was anti-secessionism rather than slavery, and they would have opposed secession over some other more defensible issue just as strongly. A secession over some other issue might still have led to a civil war, which could easily have had the same anti-secessionist outcome.
Finally, whatever "sovereignty" the US states have is really at the mercy of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is free to interpret the notion of "sovereignty" as broadly or as narrowly as it wishes, and a future Supreme Court could even turn it into a dead letter, a purely theoretical notion – and since they appoint the Supreme Court, the President and Senate have the ability in the long-run to influence the Supreme Court's positions. In recent times, the Supreme Court has been majority conservative-leaning, and conservatives are probably somewhat more sympathetic to the notion of "state sovereignty" than liberals/progressives are – but, I think the current conservative majority is mostly just a historical accident, the conservative side got lucky, it has had a liberal/progressive majority in the past and could well again at some point in the future.
It certainly looks as though the United States constituted as a federation of sovereign States is slowly de-facto transitioning to a centralized bureaucratic empire. I don't believe that's happened yet, but using the institutions of the old order to institute the new one is a very old trick, just look at the Roman Principate. So if and when that transition does occur[1] I wouldn't be surprised if the courts will be part of the fig leaf used to hide it.
[1] Perhaps it already has, the average Roman had no idea he no longer lived in a Republic.
