Opinion ID: 4037404
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Counts One and Two: ATS

Text: Under Kiobel, a federal court’s jurisdiction under the ATS is subject to the presumption against extraterritoriality. 133 S. Ct. at 1664. A federal court lacks jurisdiction over an ATS claim with an extraterritorial component unless the claim “touch[es] and concern[s] the territory of the United States . . . with sufficient force 8 Case: 16-10921 Date Filed: 09/27/2016 Page: 9 of 17 to displace the presumption.” Id. at 1669. Baloco II addressed and Doe elaborated upon the standard for extraterritorial application of the ATS. Baloco II emphasized that, to invoke subject matter jurisdiction under the ATS, the claims must “touch and concern” the territory of the United States and must allege conduct “focused in the United States.” 767 F.3d at 1239. Doe construed Kiobel and Baloco II, among other ATS cases, to hold that “claims will only displace the presumption against extraterritoriality if enough of the relevant conduct occurs domestically and if the allegations of domestic conduct are supported by a minimum factual predicate.” Doe, 782 F.3d at 598 (emphasis in original). Both Baloco II and Doe held that the plaintiffs’ allegations failed to overcome the presumption against extraterritoriality and that the plaintiffs had therefore failed to invoke federal court subject matter jurisdiction under the ATS. See Doe, 782 F.3d at 600; Baloco II, 767 F.3d at 1239. As the Plaintiffs concede, the operative complaint in this action is nearly identical in pertinent part to the complaint deemed insufficient in Doe. Absent any meritorious distinction, we must conclude in accordance with Doe that the Plaintiffs fail to invoke the district court’s subject matter jurisdiction under the ATS. Therefore, the district court appropriately dismissed Counts One and Two on the authority of Baloco II and Doe. 9 Case: 16-10921 Date Filed: 09/27/2016 Page: 10 of 17 On appeal, the Plaintiffs focus their argument not on the merits of the dismissal but on the district court’s implicit denial of the Plaintiffs’ request for discovery on the Defendants’ U.S.-based conduct. But the Plaintiffs have identified no reason to conclude that the district court abused its discretion in declining to permit jurisdictional discovery. Counsel for the Plaintiffs first sued three of the five Defendants in 2003 on similar allegations and identical legal bases. The Plaintiffs filed the operative complaint after Kiobel was decided and with the benefit of ten years of evidence obtained from the preceding related cases. The Plaintiffs therefore had ample opportunity to plead allegations that “touch[ed] and concern[ed] the territory of the United States.” Kiobel, 133 S. Ct. at 1669. Given the tremendous volume of information available to the Plaintiffs, it is telling that the operative complaint continues to plead sparse allegations of U.S.-based conduct and that the Plaintiffs fail to offer any indication that they could in good faith plead additional U.S.-based conduct. Under these circumstances, the district court did not abuse its discretion by implicitly declining to permit jurisdictional discovery. See Butler v. Sukhoi Co., 579 F.3d 1307, 1314 (11th Cir. 2009) (“Inasmuch as the complaint was insufficient as a matter of law to establish a prima facie case that the district court had jurisdiction, the district court abused its discretion in allowing the case to proceed and granting discovery on the jurisdictional issue.”). 10 Case: 16-10921 Date Filed: 09/27/2016 Page: 11 of 17 The district court did err, however, in dismissing with prejudice the Plaintiffs’ ATS claims. The ATS is a jurisdictional statute.1 Because the presumption against extraterritoriality limits the scope of the ATS’s jurisdictional reach, a dismissal for failure to rebut the presumption is a dismissal for failure to invoke the district court’s subject matter jurisdiction. Baloco II, 767 F.3d at 1239 (dismissing the plaintiffs’ ATS claims for failure to overcome the presumption against extraterritoriality and describing dismissal as “without prejudice . . . for lack of subject matter jurisdiction”). Thus, while the district court may in its discretion deny the Plaintiffs another opportunity to plead federal court subject matter jurisdiction, the district court may not otherwise prejudice the Plaintiffs’ rights with respect to claims over which it lacks jurisdiction. See Stalley ex rel. United States v. Orlando Reg’l Healthcare Sys., Inc., 524 F.3d 1229, 1234–1235 (11th Cir. 2008) (“[T]he district court lacked subject matter jurisdiction over the complaint, and it had no power to render a judgment on the merits. Consequently, the district court should have dismissed the complaint without prejudice, and we remand in part so that the district court can reenter its dismissal order without prejudice.” (citation omitted)). Therefore, the district court’s dismissal of the ATS claims, while proper, should not have been characterized as a dismissal with 1 While we refer to Counts One and Two as “ATS claims,” they are more appropriately described as claims under the law of nations over which a federal court may have subject matter jurisdiction under the ATS. 11 Case: 16-10921 Date Filed: 09/27/2016 Page: 12 of 17 prejudice. We reverse the district court’s dismissal with prejudice of Counts One and Two and remand with instructions to dismiss without prejudice Counts One and Two.