Becerra v. Target Corporation

Background

Plaintiffs Emanuel Becerra, Marijke Myland, Krista Ivy, David Harris, Tina McBride, and Leslie Cusse — current and former Executive Team Leaders (ETLs) at Target stores — filed this collective and class action against Target Corporation, alleging that Target misclassified ETLs as "exempt" employees not entitled to overtime pay, in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), 29 U.S.C. § 201 et seq., and the wage-and-hour laws of California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Illinois, and Minnesota.

Target owns and operates over 1,900 stores nationwide. The lawsuit was filed on February 10, 2025. Several of the named plaintiffs — Becerra, Myland, and others — had previously opted into a separate, earlier-filed FLSA collective action called Babbitt v. Target Corp., Civil No. 20-490, also pending before Judge Frank. Babbitt was filed on February 11, 2020, by plaintiffs represented by the same counsel as in the present case. In March 2022, the Babbitt court conditionally certified a nationwide collective of all current and former ETLs (excluding certain positions) who worked for Target on or after July 20, 2018. Notice was sent to over 15,000 potential class members, and over 3,500 had opted in by the close of the opt-in period in December 2023.

In August 2024, the Babbitt plaintiffs sought to add state-law claims to that case; when that motion was denied, counsel indicated a new action would be filed. On February 10, 2025, several former Babbitt opt-ins filed the present lawsuit. Subsequent amendments to the complaint added and removed various named plaintiffs, and the operative pleading at the time of this ruling is the Second Amended Complaint (SAC).

The proposed FLSA collective in the present case covers all persons employed by Target as ETLs (excluding the same four positions as in Babbitt) at any time from February 10, 2022, to the present, who do not have a consent-to-join on file in either Babbitt or a third related case, Jibowu v. Target Corp., Civil No. 24-4189.

The Motion

Target moved to dismiss or, in the alternative, stay the FLSA collective claim (Count One of the SAC), arguing: (1) the present FLSA collective claim is duplicative of the first-filed Babbitt action under the first-filed rule; and (2) equitable considerations independently support dismissal because plaintiffs' counsel allegedly breached a representation made in Babbitt that any newly filed complaint would not include FLSA claims.

Legal Standard: The First-Filed Rule

The first-filed rule provides that, in cases of concurrent jurisdiction, the court in which jurisdiction first attaches has priority to hear the case. See Nw. Airlines, Inc. v. Am. Airlines, Inc., 989 F.2d 1002, 1005 (8th Cir. 1993). Its purposes are conservation of judicial resources and avoidance of conflicting rulings. The rule does not require a perfect overlap of parties and claims — substantial similarity is sufficient. See Wright v. Walden Univ., LLC, 2017 WL 1435717, at *3 (D. Minn. Apr. 21, 2017). Absent compelling circumstances, the rule applies. When it does, the court has discretion to dismiss, stay, or transfer the second-filed case.

Analysis

Substantial Overlap

The court found substantial overlap between Babbitt and the present case. Both actions name Target as the only defendant. Both involve ETLs in the same excluded-position categories. Both allege the same FLSA misclassification theory and seek the same remedies — unpaid overtime and liquidated (doubled) damages. The time periods overlap. Although the proposed collective here excludes individuals who already opted into Babbitt or Jibowu, Target demonstrated that over 10,000 individuals would still fall within the new collective's scope, and more than 7,000 of those already received notice in Babbitt. The court found that sending a second notice to thousands of ETLs who already received Babbitt notice would risk serious confusion among putative collective members, citing Castillo v. Taco Bell of Am., LLC, 960 F. Supp. 2d 401, 405 (E.D.N.Y. 2013), and Walker v. Progressive Cas. Ins. Co., 2003 WL 21056704 (W.D. Wa. 2003).

The court rejected plaintiffs' argument that excluding existing Babbitt opt-ins was sufficient differentiation, noting that plaintiffs could have further limited the proposed collective to those who never received Babbitt notice at all, but did not do so.

Same-Court Argument

Plaintiffs argued that the first-filed rule does not apply when both actions are pending before the same judge, because the rule's purposes — avoiding conflicting rulings and conserving resources — are less compelling in that scenario. The court acknowledged this reasoning has some force and that cases like Woodards v. Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc., 2015 WL 3447438 (D. Minn. 2015), have declined to apply the rule in the same-court context. However, the court declined to hold that the rule is categorically inapplicable to same-court cases, noting that other courts — including cases within this circuit and others in the FLSA context — have applied the rule even when both actions were before the same court. See Mosley v. Hydrostatic Oil Tools, Inc., 2021 WL 3134917 (W.D. Ark. 2021); Burns v. County of Nassau, 337 F. Supp. 3d 210 (E.D.N.Y. 2018).

Conclusion on the First-Filed Rule

Applying the first-filed rule's core rationales — judicial and party resource conservation, efficient resolution of overlapping FLSA collective claims, and prevention of confusion among collective members — the court concluded that dismissal of the FLSA collective claim was appropriate. The court found no compelling circumstances that would counsel against applying the rule here.

What the Court Did Not Dismiss

The court expressly noted that the six state-law overtime claims (Counts Two through Seven) are not at issue in Babbitt and may proceed despite the dismissal of the FLSA collective claim. The court also noted that individual plaintiffs — and any ETLs who never received notice in Babbitt or Jibowu — are not precluded from pursuing FLSA claims on an individual basis.

Disposition

The court granted Target's motion. Plaintiffs' FLSA collective claim (Count One of the SAC) was dismissed with prejudice. The state-law claims remain pending.