Supreme Court hears dispute over whether federal courts keep supplemental jurisdiction after plaintiffs drop federal claims

The Supreme Court heard argument in Royal Canin v. Wolschleager over whether federal courts retain supplemental jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. §1367 when a plaintiff drops federal claims after a case is removed to federal court. Petitioner's counsel, Miss Wellington, argued that the Eighth Circuit’s decision below is ‘‘an extreme outlier’’ and that the statute and a century of precedent support letting district courts, in their discretion, keep state-law claims that are related to removed federal claims.

Wellington told the justices that ‘‘the text of section 1367 states that there is supplemental jurisdiction unless Congress has expressly provided otherwise’’ and urged the Court to read the statute to preserve the longstanding removal-context rule reflected in decisions such as Cohill and Saint Paul Mercury. She said district courts should be able to weigh ‘‘gamesmanship’’ and judicial-efficiency considerations when a plaintiff amends after a lengthy federal adjudication, citing examples where cases had been pending for nearly two years before amendments.

Respondent counsel, Mister Keller, framed the dispute as a straightforward textual question. ‘‘The life of the law has not been logic. It has been experience,’’ he said in his opening, and then pressed a claims-based test: jurisdiction should follow the claims in the operative complaint. Keller argued that if a plaintiff amends to remove all federal claims, the federal court no longer has the federal question that would support supplemental jurisdiction and that the amended complaint should control.

Justices tested both sides on statutory text and precedent. Several asked whether the Court should look to the complaint at the time of filing, at removal, or to the later amended complaint; whether Rockwell’s footnote 6 should be treated as binding or dicta; and how the remand statute (§1447) and CAFA-related removal practice would be affected. Counsel for petitioner urged that §1367(c) provisions (which allow district courts to decline supplemental jurisdiction in certain circumstances) and the statute’s history support maintaining discretion in removal cases. Keller countered that a rule that sustains jurisdiction after a plaintiff removes federal claims would be inconsistent with the ordinary rule that courts look to the operative complaint.

Neither side conceded a dispositive, easy textual answer: the bench debated whether stare decisis and consistent lower-court practice should weigh heavily in the Court’s analysis or whether strict textualism favors the respondents. Counsel for the petitioner warned that ruling for respondents would overturn ‘‘a hundred years of precedent’’ and undermine district-court discretion; Keller argued that statutory text and the operative-complaint rule control.

After rebuttal and final questioning, the Court submitted the case for decision.

What happens next: The Court’s eventual opinion will resolve whether district courts may continue to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over related state claims when the federal claims that supported removal are later eliminated by amendment. The ruling could narrow or preserve district-court discretion in removed cases and influence removal strategy in class-action and other multi-claim litigation.