Source: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/229/358/577364/
Timestamp: 2017-11-20 05:32:27
Document Index: 360059397

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 12', '§ 1002', '§ 12111', '§ 2611', '§ 2000', '§ 1332', '§ 0']

Celia Da Silva, Plaintiff-appellant, v. Kinsho International Corporation and Haruo Maruyama, Defendants-appellees, 229 F.3d 358 (2d Cir. 2000) :: Justia
Justia › US Law › Case Law › Federal Courts › Courts of Appeals › Second Circuit › 2000 › Celia Da Silva, Plaintiff-appellant, v. Kinsho International Corporation and Haruo Maruyama, Defenda...
Celia Da Silva, Plaintiff-appellant, v. Kinsho International Corporation and Haruo Maruyama, Defendants-appellees, 229 F.3d 358 (2d Cir. 2000)
US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit - 229 F.3d 358 (2d Cir. 2000)
Argued: August 30, 2000Decided: October 05, 2000
Three weeks later, the Court decided that Kinsho's failure to qualify as an "employer" under Title VII was not jurisdictional, dismissed the Title VII complaint under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b) (6) (failure to state a claim) rather than 12(b) (1) (lack of jurisdiction), and ruled that it had been entitled to exercise, and had appropriately exercised, supplemental jurisdiction over the non-federal claims. Judgment was entered for the defendants on both the federal and pendent claims. Seeking an opportunity to pursue the state and city claims in state court, Da Silva appeals, challenging only the ruling that the fifteen-employee requirement is not jurisdictional.
Whether a disputed matter concerns jurisdiction or the merits (or occasionally both) is sometimes a close question. Court decisions often obscure the issue by stating that the court is dismissing "for lack of jurisdiction" when some threshold fact has not been established, without explicitly considering whether the dismissal should be for lack of subject matter jurisdiction or for failure to state a claim.1 As a leading commentator has pointed out, "Subject matter jurisdiction in federal-question cases is sometimes erroneously conflated with a plaintiff's need and ability to prove the defendant bound by the federal law asserted as a predicate for relief--a merits-related determination." 2 Moore's Federal Practice § 12.30 [1], at 12-36 (3d ed. 2000).
Less clearly placed on one side of the jurisdiction/merits line are disputes as to the existence of a fact that is essential to a constitutional exercise of Congress's power to regulate. For example, in Hospital Building Co. v. Trustees of Rex Hospital, 425 U.S. 738 (1976), the Supreme Court considered whether a complaint alleged a sufficient nexus between an alleged antitrust conspiracy and interstate commerce. Reversing a dismissal, the Court noted that the Court of Appeals, which had affirmed the dismissal, had not been sure whether the dismissal had been ordered under Rule 12(b) (6) or Rule 12(b) (1), but had interpreted the dismissal to have been under Rule 12(b) (6). The Supreme Court said it too would treat the dismissal as made under Rule 12(b) (6), but noted that it would have made the same analysis had it been under Rule 12(b) (1). See id. at 742 n.1.
Even less clear are disputes as to whether a claim, as to which Congress undoubtedly could have constitutionally extended a statute, is within the statute as enacted. For example, in Hishon v. King & Spalding, 467 U.S. 69 (1984), the Supreme Court reviewed a District Court's dismissal of a Title VII claim brought by a lawyer denied partnership in a law firm. The District Court had ruled that Title VII did not apply to selection of partners and dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. The Supreme Court ruled that the statute applied to partnership decisions, id. at 73-78, and expressly declined to consider "the wisdom of the District Court's invocation of Rule 12(b) (1), as opposed to Rule 12(b) (6)," id. at 73 n.2. In EEOC v. Arabian American Oil Co., 499 U.S. 244 (1991), the Supreme Court affirmed a District Court's dismissal, for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, of a claim that Title VII applied to a suit by a United States employee working abroad for a United States employer. Although agreeing with the District Court's view of the limited reach of the statute, the Supreme Court's opinion did not comment on whether the dismissal had been properly based on lack of subject matter jurisdiction, rather than failure to state a claim.
Finally, there are cases, such as the pending one, where the dispute concerns the existence of a fact (here, fifteen or more employees) that Congress has specified as a prerequisite for the application of a federal statute. With respect to cases in this category, prior case law does not settle the issue in this Circuit,4 but it offers some helpful guidance. In Bleiler v. Cristwood Construction, Inc., 72 F.3d 13 (2d Cir. 1995), we considered a District Court's dismissal of an ERISA claim because neither of the defendants was an "employer" within the statutory definition contained in 29 U.S.C. § 1002(5) (1994). Although we agreed with the District Court that the defendants were not covered employers, Bleiler, 72 F.3d at 15-16, we rejected the District Court's dismissal for lack of subject matter jurisdiction and ruled that the ERISA claim should have been dismissed for failure to state a claim, see id. at 15 n.1. As in the pending case, the consequence of our upholding the dismissal on the basis of Rule 12(b) (6) was that the dismissal of the federal claim left the District Court free to use its discretion to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over state law claims. See id. at 16.
The rulings in other circuits are mixed. The Seventh Circuit has ruled that the fifteen-employee requirement of Title VII is not jurisdictional, see Sharpe v. Jefferson Distributing Co., 148 F.3d 676, 677 (7th Cir. 1998) ("A plaintiff's inability to demonstrate that the defendant has 15 employees is just like any other failure to meet a statutory requirement."),6 and the District of Columbia Circuit, considering the same requirement of the Americans with Disabilities Act, see 42 U.S.C. § 12111(5) (A) (post-1994 claims), has also ruled that the requirement is not jurisdictional, see EEOC v. St. Francis Xavier Parochial School, 117 F.3d 621, 623-25 (D.C. Cir. 1997).
Other circuits, however, have ruled, with little or no discussion, that the requisite number of employees is jurisdictional in Title VII cases, see Scarfo v. Ginsberg, 175 F.3d 957, 960 (11th Cir. 1999); Greenlees v. Eidenmuller Enterprises, Inc., 32 F.3d 197, 198 (5th Cir. 1994); Childs v. Local 18, IBEW, 719 F.2d 1379, 1382 (9th Cir. 1983); Armbruster v. Quinn, 711 F.2d 1332, 1335 (6th Cir. 1983); see also Hukill v. Auto Care, Inc., 192 F.3d 437, 441-42 (4th Cir. 1999) (same as to Family and Medical Leave Act, 29 U.S.C. § 2611(4) (A) (i)).
In the pending case, the jurisdictional statute states: "Each United States district court ... shall have jurisdiction of actions brought under this subchapter [Title VII]." 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(f) (3). This formulation is notably different from the authorization of diversity jurisdiction, 28 U.S.C. § 1332, which makes a threshold fact, the amount in controversy, an explicit ingredient of subject matter jurisdiction. In contrast to the specific threshold requirement of section 1332, section 2000e-5(f) (3) requires only that the action is "brought under" Title VII, a standard linguistically similar to, and arguably less exacting than, the "arising under" formulation of section 1331. Surely Da Silva has "brought" her action under Title VII, in the sense that she has endeavored to plead that an employer covered by Title VII has violated its prohibition. Even if "brought under" should be understood to exclude claims that present no colorable basis for claiming a Title VII violation, cf. Bell v. Hood, supra (frivolous or plainly insubstantial claim insufficient to invoke "arising under" jurisdiction), Da Silva's claim alleged a violation by an employer that could plausibly be regarded with its parent company as a single employer, thereby potentially meeting the fifteen-employee requirement. Her ultimate failure to prove single employer status is not a ground for dismissing for lack of subject matter jurisdiction or even for failure to state claim; it is a ground for defeating her federal claim on the merits.
In violation of our local rules prohibiting citation of unpublished summary orders, see 2d Cir. R. § 0.23, the Appellant calls our attention to an unpublished summary order in Guadagno v. Wallack Ader Levithan Associates, 125 F.3d 844 (table), 1997 WL 609007 (2d Cir. Oct. 2, 1997), in which we affirmed the dismissal of Title VII and ADEA claims for lack of the required number of employees. The District Court had dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. Our affirmance of the judgment in favor of the defendants noted the absence of clear error in the District Court's factual finding that the requisite number of employees had not been established, and said nothing about whether the dismissal had been properly made under Rule 12(b) (1), rather than Rule 12(b) (6). This is not surprising since the District Court's opinion gives no indication that any pendent state law claims had been presented, or that, for any other reason, the distinction between dismissal for lack of jurisdiction or on the merits had any significance in the case. The summary order approved nothing more than the District Court's unexceptional fact-finding, and presumably for that reason was unpublished.
Although a preference for a Rule 12(b) (6) dismissal is understandable where a disputed fact is both an ingredient of jurisdiction and the merits of a claim, the issue will often remain, as it does in the pending case, whether the disputed fact really is an ingredient of both jurisdiction and the merits.
If, for example, a complaint alleged fewer than fifteen employees, the complaint would be subject to dismissal under Rule 12(b) (6) for failure to state a claim, or under Rule 12(b) (1) if the pleading were deemed so demonstrably without substance as not even to invoke jurisdiction under Title VII.