By design, the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA) allows defendants to remove complex class actions to federal court. It avoids the onerous diversity requirements that defendants previously struggled to satisfy, and its $5 million amount-in-controversy threshold is often easy to meet in large class actions. In response, plaintiffs have often thrown up roadblocks to removal through artful pleading designed to avoid federal jurisdiction. When that fails, some may try to amend their pleading to destroy jurisdiction after removal.
A recent Ninth Circuit decision addressed a particularly aggressive post-removal gambit. In Faulk v. JELD-WEN, Inc., 2025 WL 3183012 (9th Cir. Nov. 14, 2025), Alaska residents David and Bonnie Faulk filed a class action in state court against a Delaware corporation with its principal place of business in Alaska for defective windows. Following removal under CAFA, the plaintiffs dismissed their class claims and moved to remand. The district court, bound by existing Ninth Circuit precedent, denied the motion, reasoning that the propriety of federal jurisdiction is measured at the time of removal, and not based on any amended pleadings. The plaintiffs appealed.
While the appeal was pending, the Supreme Court decided Royal Canin U.S.A., Inc. v. Wullschleger, 604 U.S. 22 (2025). Royal Canin addressed an analogous question: if a case is removed based on federal question jurisdiction and the plaintiff files an amended complaint removing all federal causes of action, does the amendment defeat removal? The Supreme Court held that it does, opening the door to widespread use of post-removal amendments as a vehicle to foreclose federal jurisdiction.
In light of Royal Canin, the Ninth Circuit in Faulk overruled its prior precedent and held that post-removal amendments can eliminate federal jurisdiction under CAFA. As a result, if plaintiffs amend their complaint to remove all class allegations, the case must be remanded to state court unless the defendant can identify another basis for federal jurisdiction.
That said, parties do not have carte blanche to amend their pleadings, and if courts perceive the amendments to amount to bad-faith forum-shopping, they may ultimately deny leave to amend. And some questions remain unanswered: if a district court dismisses class claims involuntarily, or denies class certification, is remand still required? Other courts, in the Ninth Circuit and elsewhere, may soon grapple with these questions in the wake of Royal Canin.
It is also unclear how many plaintiffs will avail themselves of the option created by Faulk, which essentially requires plaintiffs to trade their class allegations for a state-court forum. In many instances, pursuing a single-plaintiff case is not worth the expense of litigation, and plaintiffs’ lawyers working on contingency may be unwilling to give up the lucrative class allegations.