Garcia v. Quong Fook Tong
- Joseph Spero
- 3:21-cv-05539
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 2
In Garcia v. Quong Fook Tong, Judge Spero ordered Garcia to address jurisdiction and possible refusal of his state-law claim.
The order directly affects Orlando Garcia, who must respond to the jurisdictional and supplemental-jurisdiction issues, and Quong Fook Tong, whose motion to dismiss remains unresolved.
What happened
Garcia v. Quong Fook Tong concerns the defendant’s motion to dismiss for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. The motion mainly challenged whether Garcia had standing, and the opinion also identified a question about the court’s authority over Garcia’s state-law claim.
The court ordered Garcia to explain why, even if the court has jurisdiction over his federal claim under the Americans with Disabilities Act, it should not decline to hear his related claim under California’s Unruh Act. The order set March 22, 2022, as the deadline for Garcia’s opposition brief.
Judge Joseph Spero did not decide the motion to dismiss or the jurisdiction questions in this order. The available opinion text is incomplete at the point describing what portion of the case survives the motion.
The detailed version
- Garcia v. Quong Fook Tong · No. 3:21-cv-05539
- Joseph Spero
- Mar. 9, 2022
Background
Defendant Quong Fook Tong moved on March 8, 2022, to dismiss the case for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. The opinion states that the motion primarily addressed standing. Garcia’s claims included a federal claim under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and a state-law claim under the Unruh Act.
Order to Show Cause
The court ordered Garcia to show why, if the court determined that it had subject-matter jurisdiction over his ADA claim, it should not decline to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over his Unruh Act claim. Supplemental jurisdiction is a court’s authority to hear a related state-law claim alongside a federal claim. The court directed Garcia to address the reasons discussed in Arroyo v. Rosas, including the possibility that exceptional circumstances could justify declining supplemental jurisdiction when the issue is raised early in the case.
Disposition
The order required Garcia to address these issues in an opposition brief due March 22, 2022. It did not grant or deny the motion to dismiss, decide whether Garcia had standing, determine whether the court had jurisdiction, or resolve the merits of either claim. The available text ends before fully stating what portion of the case survives the motion.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.