Sepulveda v. Gazali
- Vince Chhabria
- 3:22-cv-01899
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 1
In Sepulveda v. Gazal, Judge Chhabria dismissed the Unruh Act claim by declining supplemental jurisdiction and ordered the defendant to choose the next jurisdictional step.
Richard Sepulveda’s Unruh Act claim was dismissed after the court declined supplemental jurisdiction. The defendant must notify the court within 14 days whether it wants jurisdictional discovery or an evidentiary hearing.
What happened
In Sepulveda v. Gazal, the court addressed Richard Sepulveda’s claim under California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act.
The court declined to keep that claim because the case was still in its early stages and considerations such as efficiency, convenience, fairness, and respect for state courts did not favor doing so. The court also cited the circumstances it described as involving a frequent filer of Americans with Disabilities Act and Unruh Act claims seeking federal jurisdiction to avoid California procedural barriers.
Judge Vince Chhabria ordered the defendant to notify the court within 14 days whether it wanted three months of discovery about the court’s jurisdiction or preferred to proceed directly to an evidentiary hearing. If the defendant chose discovery, it could investigate whether Sepulveda intended to return and whether he had personally visited the defendant’s establishment.
The detailed version
- Sepulveda v. Gazali · No. 3:22-cv-01899
- Vince Chhabria
- Sept. 28, 2022
Background
The order concerns Richard Sepulveda’s claim under California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act. The court referred to the case as involving a plaintiff who frequently files claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Unruh Act while seeking federal jurisdiction to avoid California’s procedural requirements for those suits.
Ruling
The court declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the Unruh Act claim. Supplemental jurisdiction is a federal court’s authority to hear a related state-law claim together with a federal claim. The court relied on the early stage of the case and concluded that judicial economy, convenience, fairness to the litigants, and respect for state courts did not favor retaining the claim. It also found that the circumstances described in the order were the type of exceptional circumstances allowing the court to decline supplemental jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1367(c)(4).
The order is titled an order dismissing the Unruh Act claim. It does not state that the dismissal is with or without prejudice.
Next procedural step
The defendant was ordered to notify the court within 14 days whether it wanted a three-month period of jurisdictional discovery or instead wanted to proceed directly to an evidentiary hearing. If the defendant chose jurisdictional discovery, it would be permitted to investigate Sepulveda’s intent to return and whether he had personally visited the defendant’s establishment.
Disposition
The court dismissed the Unruh Act claim by declining supplemental jurisdiction and ordered the defendant to select between jurisdictional discovery and an evidentiary hearing.
Read the full 1-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.