Court Opinion

ID: 9419810
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:51:34.26445+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:20.720879
License: Public Domain

Mr. Chief Justice Stone and Mr. Justice Burton
dissenting.
The district court is without jurisdiction as a federal court unless the complaint states a cause of action arising under the Constitution or laws of the United States. Whether the complaint states such a cause of action is for the court, not the pleader, to say. When the provision of the Constitution or federal statute affords a remedy which may in some circumstances be availed of by a plaintiff, the fact that his pleading does not bring him within that class as one entitled to the remedy, goes to the sufficiency of the pleading and not to the jurisdiction. The Fair v. Kohler Die Co., 228 U. S. 22, 25; Binderup v. Pathe Exchange. 263 U. S. 291, 306-308, and cases cited. But where, as here, neither the constitutional provision nor *686any act of Congress affords a remedy to any person, the mere assertion by a plaintiff that he is entitled to such a remedy cannot be said to satisfy jurisdictional requirements. Hence we think that the courts below rightly decided that the district court was without jurisdiction because no cause of action under the Constitution or laws of the United States was stated.
The only effect of holding, as the Court does, that jurisdiction is conferred by the pleader’s unfounded assertion that he is one who can have a remedy for damages arising under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments is to transfer to the federal court the trial of the allegations of trespass to person and property, which is a cause of action arising wholly under state law. For even though it be decided that petitioners have no right to damages under the Constitution, the district court will be required to pass upon the question whether the facts stated by petitioners give rise to a cause of action for trespass under state law. See Hurn v. Oursler, 289 U. S. 238.