Opinion ID: 201381
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Artful Pleading Doctrine

Text: The Respondents invite this court to consider the possibility that the Suárez Plaintiffs engaged in artful pleading, a corollary of the well-pleaded complaint rule that a plaintiff may not defeat removal by omitting to plead necessary federal questions in a complaint. Franchise Tax Bd., 463 U.S. at 22. As discussed below with regard to federal ingredient jurisdiction, no federal question is necessary to the resolution of the state claims raised in the Suárez complaint. Furthermore, we are skeptical of the applicability of the artful pleading doctrine outside of complete federal preemption of a state cause of action. See, e.g., id. at 23 (stating that the necessary ground for the creation of the artful pleading doctrine was that the preemptive force of [a federal statute was] so powerful as to displace entirely any state cause of action); Rivet v. Regions Bank, 522 U.S. 470, 475-76 (1998) (The artful pleading doctrine allows removal where federal law completely preempts a plaintiff's state-law claim.). And surely, the United States Constitution cannot be said to wholly preempt the Commonwealth's grant of similar rights under its own Constitution. See PruneYard Shopping Ctr. v. Robins, 447 U.S. 74, 81 (1980) (state constitution may afford more, but not less, -19- protection than Federal Constitution); see also Nieves v. Univ. of Puerto Rico, 7 F.3d 270, 275 (1st Cir. 1993) (noting that 'poverty' is considered a suspect classification under the Commonwealth constitution, triggering 'strict scrutiny' analysis unobtainable under the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution). Thus, the artful pleading doctrine has no application to this dispute.