Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-23-02964/USCOURTS-ca7-23-02964-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 710
Nature of Suit: Fair Labor Standards Act
Cause of Action: 

---

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ 

No. 23-2964 

JOSE AGEO LUNA VANEGAS, 

Plaintiff-Appellee, 

v.

SIGNET BUILDERS, INC.,

Defendant-Appellant. 

____________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Western District of Wisconsin. 

No. 3:21-cv-00054-jdp — James D. Peterson, Chief Judge. 

____________________ 

ARGUED MARCH 29, 2024 — DECIDED AUGUST 16, 2024 

____________________ 

Before ROVNER, ST. EVE, and PRYOR, Circuit Judges. 

ST. EVE, Circuit Judge. This case presents two questions. 

First, do Fair Labor Standards Act collective actions, like Rule 

23 class actions, require personal jurisdiction only over their 

representative plaintiffs? Second, and if not, does Federal 

Rule of Civil Procedure 4 furnish a backdoor way to exercise

nationwide personal jurisdiction in FLSA cases? We answer 

both in the negative. A court overseeing a collective action 

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must secure personal jurisdiction over each plaintiff’s claim, 

whether representative or opt-in, individually. 

I. Background

This is a successive appeal; factual details appear in Luna 

Vanegas v. Signet Builders, Inc., 46 F.4th 636 (7th Cir. 2022). 

To briefly recap, the defendant here, Signet Builders, Inc., 

is both incorporated and headquartered in Texas. Its construction business, though, spans the nation. Signet largely hires 

holders of H-2A guestworker visas. These visas allow Signet 

to hire guestworkers for “agricultural” work. Id. at 639. Jose 

Ageo Luna Vanegas—the plaintiff—is one of those guestworkers. Working for Signet, he built structures to house livestock in three states, including Wisconsin.

Luna Vanegas alleges Signet overworked and underpaid 

him. Id. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”), 29 

U.S.C. §§ 201–219, an employer generally must pay its employees time-and-a-half for hours worked past the first 40 per 

week. See 29 U.S.C. § 207(a). Exceptions apply. One carves out 

“any employee employed in agriculture.” Id. § 213(b)(12). Because the H-2A visa requires guestworkers to work in the “agricultural” sector, Signet long considered them exempt from 

the FLSA (and so denied them overtime pay).

Unhappy with the policy, Luna Vanegas sued Signet in the 

Western District of Wisconsin. He brought a collective action, 

as the FLSA permits. Id. § 216(b). Then he served a summons 

on Signet at its Austin, Texas, office under Rule 4. Signet 

moved to dismiss, invoking the FLSA’s agriculture exception, 

and the district court granted the motion. We reversed that 

decision. See Luna Vanegas, 46 F.4th at 646. 

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No. 23-2964 3 

Still pursuing this case as a collective action—the FLSA’s 

mechanism for aggregating workers’ claims into one suit—

Luna Vanegas moved for conditional certification; he sought, 

in other words, to establish that other Signet workers “should 

be sent a notice of their eligibility to participate and given the 

opportunity to opt in to the collective action.” Ervin v. OS Rest. 

Servs., Inc., 632 F.3d 971, 974 (7th Cir. 2011). The court granted 

his motion, giving the green light to notify others about the 

pending FLSA suit and ask whether they might like to join.

The next round of litigation (to which this appeal belongs) 

seeks to define the scope of that notice. While Luna Vanegas 

pushed for nationwide distribution, Signet wanted to limit 

notice to those who had worked in Wisconsin. It reasoned that 

the Wisconsin court had only specific jurisdiction over Signet, 

meaning it could adjudicate only claims from laborers who 

had worked in Wisconsin. Deferring decision on that point, 

the district court opted to order broad notice straightaway 

and planned to sort out jurisdictional questions later.

Ultimately the district court certified the question whether 

the court must have specific jurisdiction over the claim of each 

opt-in plaintiff in an FLSA collective action. In doing so, it 

sided with Luna Vanegas, holding there is no such requirement. We accepted the interlocutory appeal under 28 U.S.C. 

§ 1292(b) and now reverse. 

II. Analysis

Absent a party’s consent to personal jurisdiction, see Mallory v. Norfolk S. Ry. Co., 600 U.S. 122 (2023), a court must secure either general or specific jurisdiction. General jurisdiction over a defendant permits a court to adjudicate any claim 

against it but exists only where a defendant is “essentially at 

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home” because its contacts with a given state are “continuous 

and systematic,” as when a business is headquartered or incorporated in that state. Goodyear Dunlop Tires Ops., S.A. v. 

Brown, 564 U.S. 915 (2011). By contrast, specific jurisdiction 

lets a court decide only claims relating to a “defendant’s contacts with the forum.” Helicopteros Nacionales de Colombia, S.A. 

v. Hall, 466 U.S. 408, 414 n.8 (1984). Specific jurisdiction covers 

adjudication of “issues deriving from, or connected with, the 

very controversy that establishes jurisdiction.” Goodyear, 564 

U.S. at 919 (citations omitted). 

The Supreme Court has disapproved exercises of specific

jurisdiction that “resemble[] loose and spurious form[s] of 

general jurisdiction.” Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Ct. of 

California, San Francisco Cnty., 582 U.S. 255, 264 (2017) 

(“BMS”). Luna Vanegas offers up two theories that seek to explain how a district court can exercise specific jurisdiction 

over a case involving a nationwide collective. But both share 

a fatal flaw. In stretching specific jurisdiction so far, Luna 

Vanegas would distend it into a “loose and spurious form of 

general jurisdiction.” Id. We cannot agree with that result.

A. Bristol-Myers Squibb Requires Claim-Specific Analysis

Two key cases assessing personal jurisdiction in other 

forms of aggregate litigation help frame the issue here. One 

addresses a California procedure called a mass action; the 

other deals with Rule 23 class actions. We conclude this case 

is more like a mass action.

First came the Supreme Court’s Bristol-Myers Squibb opinion. There, 86 California residents and 592 others sued in California’s state courts relating to injuries they attributed to a 

prescription blood thinner. These claims proceeded together

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under § 404 of California’s Civil Procedure Code, which consolidates claims into one suit—a “mass action.” The claims, 

though, remain “individual cases, brought by individual 

plaintiffs.” Mussat v. IQVIA, Inc., 953 F.3d 441, 446 (7th Cir. 

2020). 

In adjudicating mass actions, the California courts had 

taken a “sliding scale approach to specific jurisdiction” that 

accounted for the defendant’s contacts with California even 

for out-of-state claims. BMS, 582 U.S. at 260 (cleaned up). That 

would not do. The BMS Court derided this approach as “difficult to square with [its] precedents,” adding that it “resembles a loose and spurious form of general jurisdiction.” Id. at 

264. It held that for personal jurisdiction, it is not enough that 

a court has personal jurisdiction over some of those individualized claims in the mass action. The Fourteenth Amendment’s due process guarantee sets a higher bar. Instead, the 

Court stressed, each claim must stand alone. “What is needed 

... is a connection between the forum and the specific claims 

at issue.” Id. at 265. 

Second is our opinion in Mussat, 953 F.3d at 448–49, where 

we distinguished class actions from BMS-style mass actions, 

marking class actions as an exception to BMS’s rule. That 

holding relied on key features of Rule 23 class actions that 

protect absentee plaintiffs and facilitate representative litigation: “the lead plaintiffs earn the right to represent the interests of absent class members,” id. at 447, which entails “a rigorous analysis” to confirm the named plaintiffs will well represent the absentees. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 564 U.S. 

338, 350–51 (2011) (cleaned up). In direct terms, Rule 23 requires that “the representative parties will fairly and adequately protect the interests of the class.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 

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23(a)(4). Not so for mass actions, with their “individual cases, 

brought by individual plaintiffs.” Mussat, 953 F.3d at 446. 

Such “[p]rocedural formalities matter,” as we put it then. 

Id. Because of those procedural formalities in Rule 23, “the 

class as a whole is the litigating entity.” Id. at 445. Or in other 

words, the class “acquires an independent legal status.” Genesis Healthcare Corp. v. Symczyk, 569 U.S. 66, 75 (2013). That 

means “[t]he absent class members are not full parties to the 

case for many purposes,” including personal jurisdiction. 

Mussat, 953 F.3d at 447. This lack of party status is why “the 

named representatives must be able to demonstrate either 

general or specific personal jurisdiction, but the unnamed 

class members are not required to do so.” Id. A “district court

need not have personal jurisdiction over the claims of absent 

class members at all,” id. at 448, because they are not parties

for this purpose. 

“Class actions, in short, are different from many other 

types of aggregate litigation, and that difference matters in 

numerous ways for the unnamed members of the class.” Id. at 

446–47. Other circuits have agreed that Rule 23’s unique features call for this kind of representative-focused inquiry into 

jurisdiction. See, e.g., Lyngaas v. Curaden Ag, 992 F.3d 412, 435 

(6th Cir. 2021) (“[A] class action is formally one suit.”); Fischer 

v. Fed. Express Corp., 42 F.4th 366, 375 (3d Cir. 2022) (“[I]n a 

class action, the relevant claim is the claim of the class.”). 

Because we find that an FLSA collective action tracks with 

a mass action—and is quite unlike a class action—we reach 

the same result as the Court did in BMS. Or stated differently, 

we hold that BMS requires a claim-by-claim personal jurisdiction analysis in the FLSA context. In so holding we join three 

of our sister circuits. See Canaday v. Anthem Cos., Inc., 9 F.4th 

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392 (6th Cir. 2021) (applying BMS’s rule to collective actions); 

Vallone v. CJS Sols. Grp., LLC, 9 F.4th 861 (8th Cir. 2021) (same); 

Fischer, 42 F.4th 366 (same); but see Waters v. Day & Zimmermann NPS, Inc., 23 F.4th 84, 93 (1st Cir. 2022) (declining to do 

so). Their example helps confirm our conclusion’s faithful adherence to BMS. 

We start, though, with the text that creates the FLSA collective action, which sheds light on its structural parallels 

with the mass action. Specifically, 29 U.S.C. § 216(b) provides: 

An action to recover the liability prescribed in the preceding sentences may be maintained against any employer ... by any one or more employees for and in behalf of himself or themselves and other employees similarly situated. No employee shall be a party plaintiff 

to any such action unless he gives his consent in writing to become such a party and such consent is filed in 

the court in which such action is brought.

Notably, the statute calls the prospective opt-ins “party plaintiff[s].” Mussat vests that label with importance: we held that 

BMS does not extend to class actions only because of the absentee plaintiffs’ nonparty status under Rule 23. Section 

216(b), by contrast, confers on opt-in plaintiffs the rights and 

duties of parties. See Charles Alan Wright, Arthur R. Miller & 

Mary Kay Kane, Federal Practice and Procedure § 1807 (3d ed. 

2005) (“[E]very plaintiff who opts in to a collective action has 

party status, whereas unnamed class members in Rule 23 

class actions do not.”). That includes the duty to show personal jurisdiction; just as in BMS, “all of the plaintiffs are 

named parties to the case” here. Mussat, 953 F.3d at 447. 

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Consider, too, what § 216(b) omits. Nothing in the statute 

ensures adequate representation. Once an employee “gives 

his consent in writing” and files it with the court, his interest 

merges into the suit—quite unlike the Rule 23 process, where 

“lead plaintiffs earn the right to represent the interests of absent class members by satisfying all four criteria of Rule 23(a) 

and one branch of Rule 23(b).” Id. “Section 216(b) has nothing 

comparable to Rule 23(b)(3)’s requirements of predominance 

or superiority,” Scott v. Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc., 954 F.3d 

502, 519 (2d Cir. 2020). The “two provisions ‘bear little resemblance to each other,’” Fischer, 42 F.4th at 376 (quoting Scott, 

954 F.3d at 519), which is why courts must establish jurisdiction over each FLSA plaintiff’s claim, whether “representative” or opt-in, but not each class member’s. 

The statute’s history is not our starting point—the text 

holds that place—but it further confirms that FLSA collectives 

work differently from class actions. “In response to excessive 

representative litigation, Congress added the opt-in provision 

to the FLSA in 1947.” Canaday, 9 F.4th at 402. When the first 

FLSA suits were brought in the late 1930s and early 1940s, 

they often were representative, and plaintiffs not wishing for 

the judgment to bind them had to opt out. In those days, the 

statute “gave employees and their ‘representatives’ the right 

to bring actions to recover amounts due under the FLSA.” 

Hoffman-La Roche Inc. v. Sperling, 493 U.S. 165, 173 (1989). The 

Portal-to-Portal Act of 1947 effected that change, essentially 

giving plaintiffs in representative actions 120 days to become 

party plaintiffs or find their claims time-barred. See Portal-toPortal Act of 1947, ch. 52, § 8 (applying statute of limitations 

“to an individual claimant who has not been specifically 

named as a party plaintiff to the action prior to the expiration 

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No. 23-2964 9 

of one hundred and twenty days” from the Act’s effective 

date). 

The whole idea was “limiting private FLSA plaintiffs to 

employees who asserted claims in their own right and freeing 

employers of the burden of representative actions.” HoffmannLa Roche Inc. v. Sperling, 493 U.S. 165, 173 (1989). Setting out to 

curtail representative suits, Congress chose to “create a system of ‘permissive joinder’ rather than creating ‘so-called 

class actions.’” Fischer, 42 F.4th at 379 (quoting Fink v. Oliver 

Iron Mining Co., 65 F. Supp. 316, 318 (D. Minn. 1941)). To ensure FLSA plaintiffs were real parties in interest, Congress 

made them real parties. 

The dissent quibbles with this statutory history, positing 

for instance that the Portal-to-Portal Act’s true purpose was to 

“eliminate the possibility of ‘one-way intervention.’” That 

might be. But even if so, that only bolsters our holding; the 

way Congress chose to cut out the possibility of plaintiffs 

jumping on board after a favorable judgment was to make 

them true parties the moment they join the case. 

What is more, in practice courts treat FLSA collectives as 

agglomerations of individual claims. For one thing, “each 

FLSA claimant has the right to be present in court to advance 

his or her own claim.” Wright & Miller § 1807. Further, the 

statute of limitations on opt-in plaintiffs’ claims enjoys tolling 

only after the plaintiff files her consent, which goes to show 

the focus on a plaintiff’s own management of her claim. See 

Mickles v. Country Club, Inc., 887 F.3d 1270, 1281 (11th Cir. 

2018). Rule 23 class actions work the opposite way: “the commencement of a class action suspends the applicable statute

of limitations as to all asserted members of the class.” Am. Pipe 

& Const. Co. v. Utah, 414 U.S. 538, 554 (1974). Finally, “there 

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are no anonymous plaintiffs” in a collective action. Anderson 

v. Montgomery Ward & Co., Inc., 852 F.2d 1008, 1016 (7th Cir. 

1988). From filing to judgment, “collective actions permit individualized claims and individualized defenses.” Canaday, 9 

F.4th at 403. Luna Vanegas invites us to make personal jurisdiction the exception. With respect, we decline.

In short: FLSA collective actions are unlike class actions. 

Just like the mass action in BMS, a collective action is no more 

than a “consolidation of individual cases, brought by individual plaintiffs.” Mussat, 953 F.3d at 446. That individual character extends to personal jurisdiction.

Any counterarguments are unavailing.

For one, Luna Vanegas stresses certain similarities between class and collective actions. We have said, for example, 

that “there isn’t a good reason to have different standards for 

the certification of the two different types of action.” Espenscheid v. DirectSat USA, LLC, 705 F.3d 770, 772 (7th Cir. 2013). 

Other times we have called the collective action “a genuine 

representative action.” Woods v. N.Y. Life Ins. Co., 686 F.2d 578, 

581 (7th Cir. 1982). 

In rejecting this argument, we heed the Supreme Court’s 

comment that “significant differences” separate class from 

collective actions. Genesis Healthcare, 569 U.S. at 70 n.1. Indeed, 

in that same case the Court reasoned that “Rule 23 actions are 

fundamentally different from collective actions under the 

FLSA” in rejecting a proposed extension of class action 

caselaw to cover collective actions. Id. at 74. With those admonitions in mind, we cannot put the same load-bearing 

weight on Espenscheid and Woods that Luna Vanegas assigns 

them. Even so, we need not disturb those holdings—the Court 

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itself did “not express an opinion” on the use of Rule 23 standards to guide conditional certification decisions. Id. at 70 n.1. 

Next Luna Vanegas posits that BMS applies only in state 

court. Not so. True, the Court did cabin its holding to “the due 

process limits on the exercise of specific jurisdiction by a 

State,” leaving “open” the issue “whether the Fifth Amendment imposes the same restrictions.” BMS, 582 U.S. at 269. 

But Luna Vanegas cannot slip through that opening. While 

the Fifth Amendment does constrain federal courts’ jurisdiction, in this case the Fourteenth Amendment operates to restrict jurisdiction further. After all, “[f]ederal courts ordinarily follow state law in determining the bounds of their jurisdiction over persons,” Daimler AG v. Bauman, 571 U.S. 117, 125 

(2014), because federal courts ordinarily secure their jurisdiction through Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 4(k)(1)(A), 

which in turn pulls in state law limits on jurisdiction. See Canaday, 9 F.4th at 399. For reasons that follow below, this case is 

no outlier. The Fourteenth Amendment, not the Fifth, does all 

the jurisdictional work in this case. So BMS does apply, by 

operation of the Fourteenth Amendment. 

This conclusion also answers the dissent’s contention that 

the BMS Court “expressly excepted from its holding exercises 

of personal jurisdiction made by federal courts under the Fifth 

Amendment.” We do just the same today. Or put just a bit 

differently: we hold, as BMS did, that the Fourteenth Amendment imposes those restrictions—adding only that through 

Rule 4(k)(1)(A), they apply to the district court too.

The dissent notes that the Court characterized its BMS

holding as a “straightforward application ... of settled principles of personal jurisdiction.” Id. at 268. Well-settled though 

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the principles may be, BMS’s application led many courts to 

reexamine personal jurisdiction’s role in complex litigation. 

Mussat and its cousins, and FLSA cases like this one, are part 

of that reexamination process, which started in the last decade. The dissent’s reference to eighty years of FLSA history 

implies we should craft jurisdictional rules to prop up existing practices in labor law. But it is the time period since the 

Supreme Court spoke in BMS—and not the preceding seventy 

years—that most bears on our decision. 

In like vein, the dissent seeks to distinguish BMS on the 

ground that its “procedural mechanism permitted the redispersal of the individual suits after the common questions 

were resolved.” It insists that the FLSA works differently, so 

that “the claims of all plaintiffs who have opted in are 

resolved together.” Yet, we have held, the “district court has 

wide discretion to manage collective actions.” Alvarez v. City 

of Chicago, 605 F.3d 445, 449 (7th Cir. 2010). That includes the 

authority to divide a collective into pieces and adopt “a 

subclaim approach” to handle those pieces separately. Id. 

Last, Luna Vanegas entreats us to consider the possibility 

of “pendent” personal jurisdiction over claims by opt-in 

plaintiffs. “The idea comes in two forms—pendent claim and 

pendent party personal jurisdiction.” Canaday, 9 F.4th at 401. 

The former doctrine permits courts asserting personal jurisdiction over one claim to extend that jurisdiction to another 

related claim by the same plaintiff. The latter is similar, except 

the two claims come from two different parties. 

We have recognized pendent claim personal jurisdiction 

just once before, in Robinson Eng’g Co. Pension Plan & Trust v. 

George, 223 F.3d 445 (7th Cir. 2000). When we did so, we reasoned that “federal claims” in the case “provided for 

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No. 23-2964 13 

extraterritorial service”—there, “claims under the Securities 

Act and the Securities Exchange Act.” Id. at 449. Those nationwide service provisions are a key ingredient for this doctrine. 

See ESAB Grp., Inc. v. Centricut, Inc., 126 F.3d 617, 626 (4th Cir. 

1997) (permitting pendent personal jurisdiction only “[w]here 

... Congress has authorized nationwide service of process” 

(cleaned up)). No such claim exists in this case, so even pendent claim personal jurisdiction is unavailable here.

Yet Luna Vanegas asks us to push the doctrine still further, 

to endorse pendent party personal jurisdiction. This we have 

never done; indeed, we are aware of no circuit court to adopt 

the theory. And without even one “anchor” claim endowed 

with extraterritorial service, this case cannot be the first. 

Even if we look past that defect to view the issue more 

generally, we find pendent party personal jurisdiction “hard 

to reconcile with Bristol-Myers.” Canaday, 9 F.4th at 401. It recreates the same “loose and spurious form of general jurisdiction” decried in BMS, 582 U.S. at 264. “No less importantly, 

no federal statute or rule authorizes pendent claim or pendent 

party personal jurisdiction.” Canaday, 9 F.4th at 401–02. Even 

the very broadest theories of personal jurisdiction recognize 

Congress’s primacy in defining its bounds, opining that 

“Congress can extend the federal courts’ personal jurisdiction 

as far as it wants.” Stephen E. Sachs, The Unlimited Jurisdiction 

of the Federal Courts, 106 Va. L. Rev. 1703, 1729 (2020). Congress

may possess such broad power, but we surely do not. 

* * * 

The district court’s personal jurisdiction reaches only 

those claims that Wisconsin’s specific jurisdiction embraces. 

The bulk of these will, like Luna Vanegas’s, involve work 

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performed in Wisconsin—though we leave it to the district 

court to decide if others fit the bill.

B. Rule 4 Does Not Undermine the BMS Holding

Our BMS analysis depends on a foundational precept: that

the Fourteenth Amendment does in fact limit the district 

court’s personal jurisdiction over opt-in claims. Luna Vanegas 

challenges that precept, but he is mistaken.

He starts with a correct observation: the Constitution permits federal courts to exercise personal jurisdiction subject 

only to Fifth Amendment limits. The scope of these limits is 

unclear. Courts taking the narrow view have imported the 

Fourteenth Amendment general-specific dichotomy to the 

Fifth Amendment, looking for contacts between the defendant and the United States as a whole. See, e.g., Laurel Gardens, 

LLC v. Mckenna, 948 F.3d 105, 122 (3d Cir. 2020). Other jurists 

read the Fifth Amendment more broadly, authorizing Congress to extend jurisdiction as far as it likes. See, e.g., Lewis v. 

Mutond, 62 F.4th 587, 598 (D.C. Cir. 2023) (Rao, J., concurring). 

Although even the narrow view of the Fifth Amendment 

would allow the district court to decide any claim against Signet (a United States corporation), the Fifth Amendment is 

only part of the story. Other constraints limit courts’ personal 

jurisdiction. This fact owes to a bedrock principle: “Before a 

federal court may exercise personal jurisdiction over a defendant, the procedural requirement of service of summons 

must be satisfied.” Omni Capital Int’l, Ltd. v. Rudolf Wolff & Co., 

Ltd., 484 U.S. 97, 104 (1987) (cleaned up). Federal Rule of Civil 

Procedure 4 defines this procedure, which entails giving each 

defendant a copy of the complaint, plus a summons from the 

court, to notify them of the pending suit.

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Rule 4 explains that service “establishes personal jurisdiction over a defendant” only in certain situations. Two are relevant here: Rule 4(k)(1)(C) and Rule 4(k)(1)(A).

The first allows for effective service “when authorized by 

a federal statute.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(k)(1)(C). Some statutes permit service nationwide. Take the Clayton Act, which provides 

“process ... may be served ... wherever [the defendant] may 

be found.” 15 U.S.C. § 22. Other “examples of legislation expressly authorizing nation-wide service” touch areas like securities and retirement plans. Laurel Gardens, 948 F.3d at 119–

20. 

When there is no statutory authorization for effective service, Rule 4(k)(1)(A) applies. It makes service effective on a 

defendant “who is subject to the jurisdiction of a court of general jurisdiction in the state where the district court is located.” And so where a party perfects service under Rule 

4(k)(1)(A), federal courts must assess the limits on state courts’ 

jurisdiction to determine their own. Stated differently, a 

court’s jurisdiction must comply with both Fifth Amendment 

due process and the applicable state court limitations—including those announced in BMS. In keeping with that mandate, “[f]ederal courts ordinarily follow state law in determining the bounds of their jurisdiction over persons.” Daimler, 

571 U.S. at 125. Service statutes conferring broad, nationwide 

jurisdiction are the exception, not the rule.

No exception applies here, for the FLSA enjoys no special 

jurisdictional reach. But Luna Vanegas still thinks the court’s 

jurisdiction over later opt-in plaintiffs should be judged by the 

generous Fifth Amendment standard. He reasons that when 

he served Signet for his own Wisconsin suit, the court “establishe[d] personal jurisdiction.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(k)(1). With 

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that out of the way, he contends, opt-in plaintiffs need only 

comply with the Fifth Amendment. To bolster that claim, he 

points out that opt-in plaintiffs need not serve a summons on 

the defendant. Instead, he presses, the law requires only lessrigorous Rule 5 service, which involves no summons. See Fed. 

R. Civ. P. 5(b). Outside the FLSA context, parties use Rule 5 

service for such lower-stakes items as “a discovery paper required to be served on a party.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 5(a)(1)(C). 

Pulling all this together: Luna Vanegas argues, at bottom, 

that once a court establishes its personal jurisdiction under 

Rule 4, any new claims or parties need only comply with the 

Fifth Amendment—unless the addition explicitly calls for a 

new summons as, e.g., Fed. R. Civ. P. 14(a)(1) does. 

“That is not how it works.” Canaday, 9 F.4th at 400. Rule 

4(k)(1)(A), rather, “authorizes personal jurisdiction in federal 

court only as far as would be authorized in state court.” 

Wright & Miller, § 1069. Or, in other words, when the court 

asserts its jurisdiction through Rule 4(k)(1)(A) service, all it 

gets is what a state court would have. “In the case of general 

personal jurisdiction, once the court asserts personal jurisdiction over a defendant through service of process under Rule 

4(k)(1)(A), the defendant is subject to the jurisdiction of the 

court with regard to any and all claims that might be 

brought.” Fischer, 42 F.4th at 384. On the flip side, in the case 

of specific personal jurisdiction, the defendant is subject to jurisdiction only for claims tied to its contacts with the state. 

If it should become necessary to expand that jurisdiction, 

that is an occasion for new Rule 4 service. Id. at 386. This 

would not be unprecedented. See Wright & Miller, § 1146 

(“[F]airness may require the court to order that jurisdiction be 

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reasserted over [a] party himself [under Rule 4] rather than 

rely on ... Rule 5(b).”).

Just as with pendent party personal jurisdiction, we find 

Luna Vanegas’s theory “hard to reconcile with Bristol-Myers,” 

Canaday, 9 F.4th at 401, as it would create another “loose and 

spurious form of general jurisdiction.” BMS, 582 U.S. at 264. 

Indeed, Luna Vanegas’s theory would permit later-added 

claims of any kind—whether under the FLSA or plain old 

Rule 18 joinder—to sidestep the usual jurisdictional limits.

Nor can we square that result with the outcome in Tamburo 

v. Dworkin, 601 F.3d 693 (7th Cir. 2010), where we used Rule 

4(k)(1)(A) and its inherent Fourteenth Amendment analysis to 

find a lack of personal jurisdiction over claims added after the 

service of summons on the defendant under Rule 5. Both 

scholars and other courts agree that Luna Vanegas’s theory is 

flatly inconsistent with Tamburo. See A. Benjamin Spencer, Out 

of the Quandary: Personal Jurisdiction over Absent Class Member

Claims Explained, 39 Rev. Litig. 31, 43 (2019) (“[C]ourts regularly apply Rule 4(k)(1)(A) limitations to the claims appearing 

in amended complaints.”); Canaday, 9 F.4th at 400. 

Pushing back, Luna Vanegas points to our statements in 

Mussat that Rule 4(k) does not “establish[] an independent 

limitation on a federal court’s exercise of personal jurisdiction.” 953 F.3d at 447. But what we held in Mussat is that “a 

district court need not have personal jurisdiction over the 

claims of absent class members at all.” Id. at 448. The Mussat

defendant looked in vain for such a requirement in Rule 4(k). 

But a district court does need personal jurisdiction over each 

FLSA plaintiff. Rule 4(k) just defines when that obligation is 

met, when it does exist. Today’s holding coheres with Mussat. 

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18 No. 23-2964

Nor does Luna Vanegas persuade us by citing Federal 

Rule of Civil Procedure 82, which provides that the Rules “do 

not extend or limit the jurisdiction of the district courts.” The 

Supreme Court has long held “Rule 82 must be taken to refer” 

to “jurisdiction of the subject matter,” not over the person. 

Miss. Pub. Corp. v. Murphree, 326 U.S. 438, 445 (1946). 

Another argument compares Rule 5—the Rule under 

which new FLSA opt-ins inform defendants of their debut in 

the case—to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 14(a)(1), the one 

for impleading a third-party defendant into the case. The latter calls for the third-party plaintiff to “serve a summons and 

complaint” on the new party it impleads. Id. Luna Vanegas 

notes the absence of such language in Rule 5 and concludes 

future opt-ins never must assert new personal jurisdiction on 

a defendant. That does not follow. The rule is this: a court asserting specific personal jurisdiction it previously lacked

needs a summons. Fischer, 42 F.4th at 384 (“[I]f an additional 

plaintiff seeks to join the suit bringing her own claims, or if 

the original plaintiff seeks to add or amend claims, there is no 

need to serve the defendant again as long as the new claims 

arise out of or relate to the defendant’s minimum contacts 

with the forum state, because the defendant would already be 

subject to the jurisdiction of the court with respect to those 

claims”.). The Rule 14 scenario brings new personal jurisdiction over a new defendant, so it calls for Rule 4 service. Optins need new personal jurisdiction if their claims do not arise 

out of or relate to the defendant’s minimum contacts with the 

forum state. In that scenario, a summons is necessary in the 

appropriate forum; otherwise, the Rule 5 process does the job. 

Id. 

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No. 23-2964 19 

The dissent calls this a “new rule.” But as Fischer explained, this is just one application of existing law. 42 F.4th at 

386–87. Authorities have cautioned that Rule 5 service “is invalid” when “the district court has personal jurisdiction over 

the defendant only because the act that forms the basis of the 

original claim occurred within the jurisdiction, and the plaintiff would be unable to bring an independent suit ... in the 

same court because that claim lacks a nexus with the forum.” 

Wright & Miller, § 1146. We adopt and apply that rule here, 

as the Fischer court did, because we agree that “Rule 5 is better 

seen as an alternative to Rule 4 to providing notice to an opposing party in circumstances where the court already has 

personal jurisdiction over the defendant with regard to the 

plaintiff's claims.” 42 F.4th at 386. 

In the same vein, Luna Vanegas observes that for substitutions under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 25(a)(3), the new 

plaintiff need only serve “the parties as provided in Rule 5.” 

But this Rule cuts against him: if the substitution would bring

in a new party, that still calls for service “as provided in Rule 

4,” just as we hold here. Id. 

No parade of horribles undercuts our holding. Both Luna 

Vanegas and the dissent call our attention to core FLSA aims, 

including “efficiency in the resolution of disputes, by resolving in a single action common issues arising from the same 

alleged illegal activity.” Bigger v. Facebook, Inc., 947 F.3d 1043, 

1049 (7th Cir. 2020). But our holding does not undermine the 

efficiency of FLSA suits. A nationwide collective of Signet’s 

workers could proceed in Texas, which enjoys general jurisdiction over Signet, with no loss of efficiency. 

And the dissent’s concern that Signet might be forced to 

defend suits in several jurisdictions is misplaced. For no 

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20 No. 23-2964

matter what we decide today, the choice to concentrate the 

claims into one suit or disperse them across the nation rests 

always in plaintiffs’ hands. In this way, too, the FLSA is unlike 

a class action. The FLSA claims will splinter into different 

suits if (and only if) the plaintiffs so choose. The dissent’s rule 

would not alter that, so the specter of “thousands of mini trials” looms either way. 

We close with one last point. Amici supporting Luna 

Vanegas charge that siding with Signet here means every optin plaintiff must serve a defendant under Rule 4. Not so. Any 

plaintiff whose claim falls within the specific jurisdiction of a 

Wisconsin state court may join the case under Rule 5, since the 

district court already wields that much jurisdiction over Signet. Fischer, 42 F.4th at 384. It is only if the plaintiffs wish to 

expand the court’s jurisdiction that anyone need go back to 

the Rule 4 well. 

III. Conclusion

BMS teaches that a court must establish its jurisdiction 

over claims one at a time. The FLSA does not mark an exception to that rule, and neither does any loophole in Rule 4. 

REVERSED AND REMANDED. 

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No. 23-2964 21

ROVNER, Circuit Judge, dissenting. When Congress enacted 

the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”), it wanted a level playing field between employers and employees. With today’s 

holding, that level playing field is now gone, and employers 

have the advantage once again. I worry for the workers the 

FLSA was meant to protect—those who, by the very nature of 

their allegations, will almost certainly be unable to pursue relief on their own, and who rely on the collective action mechanism to have their rights vindicated at all. That these individuals may pursue their claims collectively either in the forum most convenient to their employer or in multiple unsynchronized suits scattered across the country is a hollow comfort. Indeed, these workers, whose claims allege that they 

have been undercompensated, will need to expend resources 

into a litigation perhaps hundreds or thousands of miles 

away, should they wish to proceed as a collective with opt-ins 

from multiple states. Yes, their rights have not been totally 

abolished, but they have been severely hindered for an outcome not required by statute, the Supreme Court, or personal 

jurisdiction jurisprudence.

Federal courts need not re-establish personal jurisdiction 

over opt-in FLSA collective action members. To understand 

why, one must begin from the beginning, with the purposes 

of personal jurisdiction and the FLSA.

Personal jurisdiction operates to protect states and defendants from exercises of foreign states’ “coercive power.” 

See Goodyear Dunlop Tires Operations, S.A. v. Brown, 564 U.S. 

915, 918–19 (2011). Each state is its own sovereign, and when 

one state attempts to act beyond its borders, it interferes with 

the sovereignty of other states. World-Wide Volkswagen Corp. v. 

Woodson, 444 U.S. 286, 293 (1980). This is not an absolute 

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22 No. 23-2964

restriction; states may exercise their power over foreign defendants. But when a state court seeks to do so, it must first 

evaluate whether the defendant would be inconvenienced by 

“practical problems resulting from the litigation,” whether 

the exercise complies with “traditional notions of fair play 

and substantial justice,” and whether it has a “legitimate interest in the claims in question.” Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Ct. of California, San Francisco Cnty., 582 U.S. 255, 263 

(2017) (“BMS”); Int'l Shoe Co. v. State of Wash., Off. of Unemployment Comp. & Placement, 326 U.S. 310, 316 (1945) (quoting 

Milliken v. Meyer, 311 U.S. 457, 463, (1940).. These limits restrict state courts’ exercise of personal jurisdiction to protect 

the federalism and due process interests that an exercise of 

the state’s coercive power can implicate.

When a federal court exercises personal jurisdiction, the 

equation is different because the same concerns are not implicated. Indeed, the United States is its own entity for jurisdictional purposes, with “its own direct relationship, its own 

privity, its own set of mutual rights and obligations to the 

people who sustain it and are governed by it.” J. McIntyre 

Mach., Ltd. v. Nicastro, 564 U.S. 873, 884 (2011). The consequences of these differences are not merely theoretical. For example, federal courts are not cabined by state lines the way 

that state courts are. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(k)(1)(B) (establishing 

jurisdiction over a joined party served within 100 miles of the 

issuance of the summons). So, in both motivation and practice, personal jurisdiction does not restrict federal courts the 

same way that it contains state courts.

The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure tie personal jurisdiction to the service of summons, Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(k)(1), which 

must happen within 90 days after the complaint is filed. Fed. 

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No. 23-2964 23

R. Civ. P. 4(m). See also Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(c)(1) (“A summons 

must be served with a copy of the complaint.”). Thus, it is up 

to the party filing the complaint to effectively serve the defendant and establish the federal court’s personal jurisdiction.

With the principles of personal jurisdiction established, 

we turn to the FLSA. Here, background will contextualize the 

statute’s principles and mechanisms. In 1938, Congress 

passed the FLSA to protect workers. Its purpose was simple: 

to protect workers from unfair employer practices, like failing 

to properly compensate workers for overtime work (i.e., work 

done in excess of 40 hours per week). 29 U.S.C. §§ 202, 207(a). 

Congress saw these failures as national in scope, spreading 

their nefarious effects and labor conditions “among the workers of the several States.” Id. at § 202(a). Originally, the statute 

allowed suits by employees “for and in behalf of himself or 

themselves and other employees similarly situated” or, in the 

alternative, an “agent or representative” could bring suit on 

behalf of affected employees. Knepper v. Rite Aid Corp., 675 

F.3d 249, 254 (3d Cir. 2012) (quoting Fair Labor Standards Act 

of 1938, ch. 676, 52 Stat. 1060 at 1069 (current version at 29 

U.S.C. §§ 201–219)).

In 1946, the Supreme Court held that time spent by an 

employee walking to his or her station on the employer’s 

premises was compensable under the FLSA. Anderson v. Mt. 

Clemens Pottery Co., 328 U.S. 680, 691 (1946). This resulted in 

an explosion of litigation, mostly filed by unions as the “agent 

or representative” of the affected employees. Knepper, 675 

F.3d at 255–56. Congress was troubled by the excessive and 

“champertous” litigation (i.e., litigation brought by unions, 

not the parties in interest), and it enacted the Portal-to-Portal 

Act of 1947. Id. at 255. As a result, only plaintiffs who had a 

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24 No. 23-2964

personal interest in the litigation could bring suit on behalf of 

themselves and others, not unions or other “representatives.” 

Hoffmann–La Roche, Inc. v. Sperling, 493 U.S. 165, 173 (1989). 

In addition to limiting suits to only the parties in interest, 

the Portal-to-Portal Act also sought to eliminate the possibility of “one-way intervention.” Under one-way intervention, 

because the named plaintiff brought suit on behalf of similarly situated workers, those similarly situated workers could 

wait to join the suit until after a favorable final judgment had 

been reached. See Pentland v. Dravo Corp., 152 F.2d 851, 856 (3d 

Cir. 1945). In response, Congress added the “opt in” provision 

of the FLSA.1 Under this provision, a similarly situated employee joins the suit by giving his or her “consent in writing” 

and filing “such consent in the court in which” the FLSA action is brought. 29 U.S.C. § 216(b). These consents are sent under Rule 5 and, notably, there is no requirement that the complaint be amended to add the opt-in plaintiff’s name, nor does 

the opt-in plaintiff have to serve the complaint on the defendant. See id. This makes sense, as the opt-in plaintiff wishes to 

assert the same rights as the named plaintiff. And this streamlined process upholds the FLSA’s goals of “enforcement and 

efficiency: enforcement of the FLSA, by preventing violations 

of the overtime-pay requirements and by enabling employees 

to pool resources when seeking redress for violations; and efficiency in the resolution of disputes, by resolving in a single 

1 The majority argues that this revision demonstrates Congress’s intent to make opt-in plaintiffs “true parties the moment they join the case.” 

It is not clear why forcing parties to join an action earlier would make them 

“true parties the moment they join the case.” If anything, it demonstrates 

that once a plaintiff joins the collective, he or she irrevocably binds his or 

her interests with the interests of the collective.

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No. 23-2964 25

action common issues arising from the same alleged illegal 

activity.” Bigger v. Facebook, Inc., 947 F.3d 1043, 1049 (7th Cir. 

2020). 

In light of the FLSA’s twin goals of enforcement and efficiency, and the principles of federalism and due process that 

underpin personal jurisdiction, it is unsurprising that for almost 80 years no court questioned whether opt-in plaintiffs 

needed to individually establish personal jurisdiction over 

the defendant. Requiring that opt-in plaintiffs make that 

showing hinders enforcement of the statute by making it 

harder for similarly-situated plaintiffs to bring suit and hinders efficiency by requiring defendants to defend multiple 

suits addressing the same claim. Similarly, suits brought in 

federal court do not implicate federalism because those suits 

do not infringe on state sovereignty, and they do not deprive 

defendants of due process. Indeed, if the named plaintiff establishes personal jurisdiction, then the defendant will face 

the FLSA suit in the federal court where the plaintiff brought 

suit, regardless of whether other employees opt in. To put it 

simply, allowing collective action members who cannot independently establish personal jurisdiction to opt in does not 

implicate any of the concerns personal jurisdiction is meant to 

protect. And requiring such a showing stymies the goals of 

the FLSA.

BMS did not change the interests that underlie personal 

jurisdiction, nor did it change the personal jurisdiction analysis for FLSA litigants. 

As an initial matter, BMS itself disclaimed the possibility 

that it was effectuating the sea change proposed by my colleagues in this case. Indeed, the opinion was a “straightforward application ... of settled principles of personal 

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26 No. 23-2964

jurisdiction.” BMS, 582 U.S. at 269. And, moreover, it expressly excepted from its holding exercises of personal jurisdiction made by federal courts under the Fifth Amendment. 

Id. As the amici in this case—including the eminent Professor 

Arthur Miller, the “Miller” of the Wright & Miller treatise 

cited extensively by the majority—artfully point out, absent 

some specific direction otherwise, it is the Fifth Amendment 

that governs federal court jurisdiction, not the Fourteenth 

Amendment. R. 21, at 7–10, 13. 

But even beyond BMS’s stated limits, the underpinning 

logic of the decision is inapplicable to collective actions. BMS

involved a California mass action in which mostly out-of-state 

plaintiffs sued a defendant that had few business ties to California under California state law. Id. at 259. California claimed 

that it had personal jurisdiction because of a “sliding scale” 

approach. Id. at 260. This is the “loose and spurious” exercise 

of jurisdiction that the Supreme Court disapproved of, not the 

almost century-long practice of evaluating personal jurisdiction against named collective action members.2 Id.at 264. The 

Supreme Court explained that allowing California to exercise 

personal jurisdiction under the circumstances of the case 

would violate the delicate balance of federalism among the 

states. Id. at 263. 

2 This is not to say that a longstanding practice is insulated from review, or that courts should “craft jurisdictional rules to prop up existing 

practices.” If, however, a practice is longstanding, supported by the text, 

history, and purpose of the relevant statute, and not contrary to relevant 

legal principles or the interests those principles are meant to protect, then 

the claim that a Supreme Court decision mandates the abandonment of 

that practice should be examined with the greatest possible caution.

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No. 23-2964 27

As discussed above, federalism is not a concern among the 

various federal courts. Nor is forum shopping at the expense 

of another state’s sovereignty which, the Supreme Court has 

since explained, was a concern animating the BMS decision. 

See Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Jud. Dist. Ct., 592 U.S. 351, 

369–70 (2021). 

But even under a due process lens, the potential harm to 

Bristol Myers-Squibb cannot be analogized to any harm that 

could befall Signet. Had the Supreme Court not intervened, 

Bristol Myers-Squibb would have faced suit in California under California law. BMS, 582 U.S. at 259. Indeed, the Supreme 

Court has already recognized a concern that such exercises of 

state law could punish defendants for conduct that is legal 

where it occurs. State Farm Mutual Automobile Ins. Co. v. Campbell, 538 U.S. 408, 421–22 (2003). Signet, by contrast, will be 

subject to the same law (the FLSA) no matter where it faces 

suit. It is telling that neither the majority nor Signet articulates 

what harm, injustice, or even inconvenience Signet faces.

There is another issue with the analogy, and that is the distinction between a California mass action and an FLSA collective action. The majority goes to great lengths to distinguish a 

class action from a collective action, arguing that because class 

and collective actions are distinct, opt-in plaintiffs must therefore demonstrate personal jurisdiction. But the first part of 

this hypothesis does not beget the second, and procedural 

mechanisms do not exist on a continuum with the California 

mass action statute on one end and Rule 23 class actions on 

the other. Nor have we held that class actions are the only 

procedural mechanism for which absent members are relieved of the duty to demonstrate individualized personal jurisdiction. But even accepting the premise as true that 

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28 No. 23-2964

collective and class actions are wholly distinct procedural 

mechanisms—which, for reasons discussed below, they are 

not—these differences should only matter to the personal jurisdiction analysis if they implicate the purposes of the FLSA 

or personal jurisdiction, or if they implicate the reasons the 

Supreme Court gave for reversing the California court in 

BMS. Indeed, the Supreme Court has instructed that the 

FLSA’s remedial purposes should be enforced to the full extent of the statute’s terms. Hoffmann-La Roche Inc., 493 U.S. at 

173. 

An opt-in plaintiff is not differently situated toward the 

litigation in a way that implicates jurisdiction when 

compared to a Rule 23 plaintiff. Let us go difference-bydifference to explore why. The majority argues that there is 

no assurance of adequacy, predominance, or superiority in a 

collective action. This totally ignores this court’s stated view 

that “there isn't a good reason to have different standards for 

the certification of the two different types of action.” 

Espenscheid v. DirectSat USA, LLC, 705 F.3d 770, 772 (7th Cir. 

2013). To the extent that the majority attempts to compare an 

opt-in plaintiff’s filing of consent to a motion for class 

certification under Rule 23, this comparison ignores the fact 

that it is upon the defendant’s motion for decertification that 

the court conducts its analysis into whether the opt-ins are 

similarly situated. See Campbell v. City of Los Angeles, 903 F.3d 

1090, 1110 (9th Cir. 2018) (collecting cases and noting “The 

two-step approach has been endorsed by every circuit that 

has considered it.”). The decertification motion comes after 

discovery, much like the typical motion for class certification 

under Rule 23. And even though named plaintiffs and class 

counsel in a class action must demonstrate their adequacy 

through Rule 23(a), both the named plaintiffs and counsel 

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No. 23-2964 29

must also demonstrate adequacy to earn opt-in plaintiffs in 

an FLSA collective action. See Harkins v. Riverboat Servs., Inc., 

385 F.3d 1099, 1101 (7th Cir. 2004) (if the opt-in plaintiff “is 

distrustful of the capacity of the ‘class’ counsel to win a 

judgment he won't consent to join the suit”); 29 U.S.C. § 216(b) 

(limiting collective actions to those “similarly situated” with 

the named plaintiff). The majority points out that absent 

collective action members can be present in court and hire 

their own attorneys, but so can class action members. Fed. R. 

Civ. P. 23(c)(2)(B)(iv). The majority points out that the statute 

of limitations begins tolling after the opt-in plaintiff files 

consent, but this does not demonstrate individualized control 

of the litigation after the individual opts in. Indeed, once the 

individual opts in, his or her claim becomes part of the 

broader collective, much like a class action. See Smith v. Prof’l. 

Trans., Inc., 5 F.4th 700, 703 (7th Cir. 2021) (quoting Harkins, 

385 F.3d at 1101). The majority correctly points out that the 

opt-in mechanism means opt-in collective action members are 

not anonymous, quoting Anderson v. Montgomery Ward & Co., 

852 F.2d 1008, 1016 (7th Cir. 1988). Indeed, opt-in members 

sign consent forms with their names and file those consent 

forms in court. As Anderson rightly notes, the purpose of this 

provision is not to preserve individualized control of the 

litigation, but to ensure that employees—not unions—are 

driving the litigation. See Anderson, 852 F.2d at 1016 (citing 

Arrington v. Nat’l. Broad. Co., 531 F. Supp. 498, 501 (D.D.C. 

1982)). Indeed, “[t]he written consent forms assure the court 

that the signers ‘want to have their rights adjudicated in [a 

collective] proceeding or be represented by counsel chosen by 

other plaintiffs.’” Smith, 5 F.4th at 703 (quoting Harkins, 385 

F.3d at 1101) (alteration in original). To the extent that the 

majority opinion implies that filing consent makes an opt-in 

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30 No. 23-2964

plaintiff a named party to the suit, that is incorrect. The FLSA 

statute itself distinguishes between named plaintiffs and optins. 29 U.S.C. § 256. One could argue that the very act of 

“opting in” reflects more participation in the litigation, thus 

requiring an individualized personal jurisdiction analysis. 

But no difference exists between a collective action member 

who opts in and a Rule 23 class action member who declines 

to opt out. Both will use the resources of a court to which he 

or she would not otherwise have access as a result of his or 

her choice to use a procedural mechanism to pursue relief

under the same complaint as part of a group of similarlysituated individuals.

Much seems to revolve around the assertion that collective 

action members can seemingly assert their own claims such 

that no two opt-in plaintiffs would have the same case. The 

majority argues that collective action members are called 

“party plaintiffs” in the FLSA statute and are therefore similar 

to the plaintiffs in a California mass action. But in light of the 

statutory history, it makes sense that Congress would call optin members “party plaintiffs.” It wished to distinguish them 

from unions, who would not otherwise be parties to the suit. 

Even absent this history, the Supreme Court instructs that 

“party” is not “an absolute characteristic.” Devlin v. 

Scardelletti, 536 U.S. 1, 10 (2002). Its meaning can vary based 

on context. Id. But even so, calling FLSA opt-in members 

“party plaintiffs” does not make them synonymous with the 

California mass action members. In BMS the procedural 

mechanism permitted the re-dispersal of the individual suits 

after the common questions were resolved. See Mussat v. 

IQVIA, Inc., 953 F.3d 441, 446 (7th Cir. 2020) (comparing the 

mass action statute to the federal multi-district litigation statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1407, which authorizes “coordinated or 

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No. 23-2964 31

consolidated pretrial proceedings”). While the disparate 

claims in a California mass action may be tried together, a singular trial is not required, or even presupposed. McGhan Med. 

Corp. v. Superior Ct., 14 Cal. Rptr. 2d 264, 270 (Cal. Ct. App. 

1992) (“That these [California mass action] cases may be coordinated does not mean they need be tried in one forum; it 

does not even indicate that ultimate trial of the cases need be 

unified.”). By contrast, in FLSA collective actions the claims 

of all plaintiffs who have opted in are resolved together in a 

final judgment. See Hoffmann-La Roche Inc., 493 U.S. at 172 

(noting that the collective action mechanism creates a single 

action for multiple plaintiffs). And this procedural distinction 

aligns with the dissimilar structures of the suits. Under the 

California mass action procedure, plaintiffs file their own 

complaints, which are later consolidated. See e.g., BMS, 582 

U.S. at 259 (plaintiffs filed eight separate complaints in California Superior Court). Collective actions under the FLSA, just 

like class actions under Rule 23, begin as one suit under one 

common complaint alleging the same common claim, and 

continue under that same complaint until either final judgment or until the court determines that the plaintiffs are too 

heterogeneous to proceed together. See Hoffmann-La Roche 

Inc., 493 U.S. at 172. 

And, in any event, this ignores the level of individuality 

permitted in class actions. Class action plaintiffs can also 

bring individualized claims. Indeed, this court has approved 

of the use of subclasses when faced with a breach-of-warranty 

class action that had material differences in circumstances 

with respect to the product at issue. Butler v. Sears, Roebuck & 

Co., 727 F.3d 796, 802 (7th Cir. 2013); see also Alvarez v. City of 

Chicago, 605 F.3d 445, 448–49 (7th Cir. 2010) (permitting 

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subclasses in an FLSA collective action).3 And separately, 

class action members can be subject to individualized defenses. 2 William B. Rubenstein, Newberg and Rubenstein on 

Class Actions § 4:55 (6th ed. 2024).

Despite the lack of difference between collective and class 

actions, the FLSA itself prohibits differences that would affect 

a defendant’s due process rights or inhibit efficient resolution. 

If an opt-in plaintiff’s FLSA claim is materially distinct from 

Luna Vanegas’s claim, then that opt-in plaintiff is not similarly situated to Luna Vanegas. Indeed, that would be a situation in which the collective action members are “hopelessly 

heterogenous” from each other and decertification would be 

appropriate. See Jonites v. Exelon Corp., 522 F.3d 721, 725–26 

(7th Cir. 2008). In short, FLSA opt-in plaintiffs are no more 

individualized than their Rule 23 counterparts, and both sets 

3 The majority implies that the use of subclasses in FLSA collective 

actions somehow likens those actions to separately filed suits that are consolidated under the California mass action statute, citing Alvarez, 605 F.3d 

at 449. But the use of subclasses is procedurally distinct from the consolidation of separately filed suits. Indeed, subclasses are not separate actions, 

they are groups of homogenous individuals under the same complaint alleging the same violation of the FLSA. To the extent the majority’s reference relies on Alvarez’s use of the terminology of “subclaim,” that reliance 

is misplaced. Indeed, Alvarez involved ten subclaims, but many more individuals, further illustrating that “claims” are representative in the FLSA 

context. See id. at 446; Caraballo v. City of Chicago, 2009 WL 743315, at *2 

(N.D. Ill. Mar. 18, 2009) (district court opinion reversed by Alvarez, 605 

F.3d at 451). Finally, I will note that the primary question in Alvarez, an 

FLSA case, was whether the use of subclasses meant that individual questions would predominate over common questions. Id. This question, of 

course, is taken directly from the class action context, further supporting 

the inference that class and collective actions operate similarly. Fed. R. 

Civ. P. 23(b)(3).

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No. 23-2964 33

of plaintiffs lack the markers of individuality that warranted 

judicial intervention in BMS. 

The majority opinion does not contend with this core 

shortcoming. Even though some differences do exist between 

collective and class actions—although those differences are 

more limited than the majority opinion claims—none of those 

differences trigger an obligation for opt-in plaintiffs to 

demonstrate personal jurisdiction because they do not 

implicate the interests that personal jurisdiction is designed 

to protect. BMS may have spurred a newfound interest in the 

personal jurisdiction of unnamed parties seven years ago, but 

it cannot control our outcome here. The procedural 

mechanisms—one which gathers separately filed suits for 

some purposes, and one which consolidates plaintiffs into one 

suit until final judgment—are too distinct for neat application, 

and the federalism concerns are irrelevant in federal court. 

And in the absence of controlling Supreme Court precedent, 

we look to the statute. We examine its text—which requires 

only consent, not a summons or complaint. We review its 

history—which supports nationwide collective actions. And 

we recall its purpose—to protect workers from the illegal 

actions of their employers and level the playing field so that 

they may meaningfully assert their rights. 

There also seems to be an underlying concern that if outof-state collective action members are permitted to opt in to 

collective actions, they may pursue claims (e.g., state law 

claims) against the employer that they would not be able to 

otherwise. But just as the FLSA does not require a showing of 

personal jurisdiction, it also does not waive jurisdictional requirements as to other claims. When other claims are brought 

in conjunction with FLSA claims, they are analyzed 

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34 No. 23-2964

separately and certified under Rule 23, not the FLSA. See e.g., 

Tyson Foods, Inc. v. Bouaphakeo, 577 U.S. 442, 448–49 (2016). 

Separately, the majority applies a new rule to FLSA opt-in 

plaintiffs today when it requires opt-ins to serve summons “if 

their claims do not arise out of or relate to the defendant’s 

minimum contacts with the forum state.” The majority claims 

that it is simply applying settled law to a new circumstance 

and draws a comparison between an opt-in plaintiff and a 

plaintiff who wishes to add a new, substantively unrelated 

claim to an existing suit, citing Wright & Miller. But as discussed above, the FLSA statute forecloses the possibility that 

the claim of an opt-in plaintiff is materially distinct from the 

named plaintiff’s claim because the opt-in plaintiff must be 

“similarly situated” to the named plaintiff. 29 U.S.C. § 216(b). 

In any event, it is not clear how this new application will interact with Rule 4(m)—which requires service of summons 

within 90 days of filing the complaint. Moreover, the FLSA 

requires that an opt-in plaintiff do nothing more than file his 

or her consent to join the collective. 29 U.S.C. § 216(b) (an individual opts in when “he gives his consent in writing to become such a party and such consent is filed in the court in 

which such action is brought”). It is vital to understand that 

the majority’s rule directly conflicts with both the text of the 

statute and its underlying principles. With respect, I would 

suggest that if we must disregard the text, history, and purpose of a statute to arrive at a particular outcome, then perhaps the outcome is incorrect.

Today’s decision betrays the very purposes of the FLSA, 

both for plaintiffs and defendants. FLSA plaintiffs will now 

be required to bring suit in only limited jurisdictions, and may 

struggle to bring suit at all. If plaintiffs are able to proceed in 

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No. 23-2964 35

separate forums, Signet may be subject to identical suits, challenging the same practice, alleging the same injury, in multiple courts. This is, of course, the very type of increased litigation that the FLSA sought to minimize by allowing collective 

actions. See De Asencio v. Tyson Foods, Inc., 342 F.3d 301, 306 

(3d Cir. 2003), as amended (Nov. 14, 2003). And notably, unlike BMS, the same governing law—the FLSA—will be applied to each claim. And separately, Signet may become subject to different, and perhaps incompatible, judicial holdings 

resulting from these suits in many forums. That Signet has 

asked and, today, received, our permission to create inefficiency not just for itself, but for other smaller, less successful 

corporations and district court judges who will now be faced 

with perhaps hundreds—or possibly even thousands—of 

mini trials just on the question of personal jurisdiction,4

should only make us ask why Signet desires such an outcome, 

particularly in the absence of an articulated injury. The answer, of course, is in the first paragraph of this dissent. The 

level playing field, which Congress carefully constructed, is 

now gone.

4 The majority claims that under this dissent’s “rule,” thousands of 

mini trials will occur. I submit that is not accurate. Indeed, as noted above, 

it is the majority’s rule that will cause such mini trials to occur. To the 

extent this dissent puts forth a “rule” it is only that personal jurisdiction 

should be evaluated against the named plaintiff of an FLSA collective action. By contrast, the majority’s rule will result in opt-in specific challenges 

to personal jurisdiction. The district court will then have to evaluate each 

challenge, opt-in by opt-in. Those evaluations might be difficult, and they 

might require evidence or testimony to adjudicate. It is this individualized 

personal jurisdiction inquiry that results in thousands of mini trials.

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36 No. 23-2964

In our holding today, we betray the purposes of the FLSA 

for an outcome not mandated, or even encouraged, by the Supreme Court or personal jurisdiction law. 

For these reasons, I respectfully dissent. 

Case: 23-2964 Document: 47 Filed: 08/16/2024 Pages: 36