Opinion
No. 00 C 3325.
June 5, 2000.
MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER
G and J Plastering Company, Inc. ("G and J") and George Palicsek have filed a timely Notice of Removal ("Notice") to bring to this District Court from the Circuit Court of Cook County a putative class action brought against them by G and J employees Krzystzof Glowacki and Jozef Omylak as proposed class representatives. But because the Notice improperly characterizes the Complaint's exclusively state law claim as a federal claim, this Court sua sponte remands this action to the state court of origin for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.
There is nothing more fundamental to federal jurisprudence than the principle that federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction, competent to entertain actions solely as Congress prescribes. And a close corollary to that principle is the famous aphorism by Justice Holmes inThe Fair v. Kohler Die Specialty Co., 228 U.S. 22, 25 (1913):
Of course the party who brings a suit is master to decide what law he will rely upon and therefore does determine whether he will bring a "suit arising under" . . . [any] law of the United States by his declaration or bill.
That doctrine of self-determination is limited only by (1) the concept that an "artful pleader" will not be allowed to frame an inherently federal claim in deceptively different terms and (2) the principles of field preemption, under which certain claims are viewed as necessarily implicating one of a few specific statutes, including the Labor Management Relations Act ("LMRA").
But in this instance the Complaint is expressly based on alleged violations of an Illinois statute, the Illinois Minimum Wage Act, 820 ILCS 105/1 to 101/15. It does not lie in defendants' mouths to assert, as they do, that plaintiffs' claim is advanced instead:
1. under LMRA § 301(a) (20 U.S.C. § 185(a)), which grants federal jurisdiction over suits for violation of contracts such as collective bargaining agreements, not for statutory violations;
2. under the Federal Arbitration Act, which is universally held not to be a substantive source of federal jurisdiction;
3. under some unidentified provision of the National Labor Relations Act; or
4. under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (plaintiffs might perhaps have invoked rights under that statute, but they did not — and that omission appears entirely deliberate and is entirely principled).
In sum, the seminal pronouncement in The Fair controls: Plaintiffs have opted to bring an exclusively state law claim, and defendants have no right to challenge that choice. Because as a matter of certainty "it appears that the district court lacks subject matter jurisdiction" ( 28 U.S.C. § 1447(c)), the just-quoted statute mandates remand, and this Court so orders. And as permitted by this District Court's LR 81.2(b), the Clerk is ordered to mail the certified copy of the remand order forthwith.