Opinion ID: 4549623
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Substantial

Text: Third, the federal issue is substantial “in the relevant sense.” Gunn, 568 U.S. at 260. The relevant sense of substanti‐ ality is not the importance of the federal issue to the lawsuit. “The substantiality inquiry under Grable looks instead to the importance of the issue to the federal system as a whole.” Id. In Grable, the substantial federal issue in a state action to quiet title was whether a federal agency’s sale of the contested property had been valid under federal law. “The Govern‐ ment’s ‘direct interest in the availability of a federal forum to vindicate its own administrative action’ made the question ‘an important issue of federal law that sensibly belonged in a federal court.’” Id. at 260–61 (brackets omitted), quoting Gra‐ ble, 545 U.S. at 315. In Smith v. Kansas City Title & Trust Co., the substantial federal issue in a state shareholder suit was whether certain classes of federal bonds were void because issued under an unconstitutional federal statute. 225 U.S. 180, 195 (1921), discussed in Gunn, 568 U.S. at 261. In this case, the importance of the contract formation issue to the federal system as a whole is the very reason federal law applies to begin with: the “negotiation and administration” of No. 19‐3142 17 collective bargaining agreements would be substantially im‐ peded, contrary to federal labor policy, if employers doing business in Wisconsin could not be certain when their collec‐ tive bargaining agreements become enforceable because two diﬀerent legal regimes might apply. Lucas Flour, 369 U.S. at 103.