Yeh v. Twitter, Inc.

Background

Henry Yeh filed a class-action complaint against Twitter, Inc. in San Francisco County Superior Court on March 10, 2023. Twitter removed the case to the Northern District of California, asserting federal jurisdiction under the Class Action Fairness Act and related removal statutes. Yeh later moved to remand, meaning he asked the federal court to return the case to state court. Twitter filed a motion to dismiss on grounds other than deficient standing and opposed remand.

The opinion described related litigation involving allegations that Twitter deceptively disclosed and sold users’ contact information for marketing purposes. In that earlier related proceeding, Twitter had repeatedly argued that materially similar allegations did not show a sufficiently concrete and particularized injury for constitutional standing. The earlier proceeding was later voluntarily dismissed without a ruling on Twitter’s pending motion to dismiss.

Legal standard

A case may be removed only if the federal court would have had subject-matter jurisdiction over it originally. The party that removes the case bears the burden of establishing federal jurisdiction, including Article III standing. Article III standing requires an injury in fact, a connection between the injury and the challenged conduct, and a likelihood that a court can provide a remedy. If standing is not established in a removed case, the usual remedy is remand rather than dismissal.

The parties did not dispute that statutory standing existed under the Class Action Fairness Act. The dispute concerned constitutional Article III standing.

Court’s reasoning

The court held that Twitter had not met its burden of establishing Yeh’s Article III standing. Twitter did not affirmatively state that Yeh had standing or explain how the complaint established it. Instead, Twitter argued that the court could address the merits because jurisdictional and merits issues were supposedly intertwined, and that remand would be futile because Yeh’s claims could not succeed in state court.

The court rejected those arguments. It explained that the narrow rule allowing a court to address intertwined jurisdictional and merits issues did not apply because the jurisdictional questions here arose under Article III, rather than under a federal statute that supplied both jurisdiction and the cause of action. Twitter’s decision not to seek dismissal based on standing also did not establish that standing existed. The court further found that Twitter had not shown that the eventual result after remand was so certain that dismissal, rather than remand, was required.

Disposition

The court GRANTED Yeh’s motion to remand. It REMANDED the case to San Francisco Superior Court, TERMINATED AS MOOT Twitter’s motion to dismiss and its associated request for judicial notice, and directed the clerk to close the federal case. The court did not decide the merits of Yeh’s state and common-law claims.