Ninth Circuit Makes It Easier for Employers to Remove State Court Class Actions to Federal Court

The Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA) was enacted in 2005 to make it easier for out-of-state defendants to remove interstate class actions to federal court. As the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Report noted at the time, plaintiffs’ attorneys were filing nationwide class actions and “carefully crafting language to avoid federal courts,” in order to “easily ‘game the system’ and avoid removal of large interstate class actions to federal court.” But even after CAFA’s enactment, out-of-state employers in the Ninth Circuit struggled to remove class actions because under the standard set forth in Lowdermilk v. U.S. National Bank Association, defendants needed to establish to a “legal certainty” the $5 million amount in controversy required for CAFA removal.