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Excerpt from Doe v. Deutsche Lufthansa AG, Friday via Judge Susan Illston (N. D. Cal. ):
John Doe and Robert Roe are a gay couple who have been in a “committed, but low-key” relationship for 33 years and got married in California in 2013. Doe is a U. S. citizen and California resident living in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Arabia for most of the year, where he works for a company as a legal advisor. Roe is a Saudi national who, until May 2021, lived full-time in Riyadh and therefore worked in real estate. Since 1989, Doe and Roe had been living together in Saudi Arabia, but were forced to hide their dates and sexual orientation, as homosexuality is a crime punishable by death in Saudi Arabia. 33 years of secret rendezvous for the government, strangers, employers, friends and family. “
In 2021, Doe and Roe were flying on Lufthansa from Riyadh to San Francisco. For complex reasons similar to COVID-like U. S. rules, Doe and Roe ended up having to disclose to a senior Lufthansa worker at Riydah airport that they were married under U. S. law. , and the worker allegedly said so publicly; They also claim that the details relating to the marriage were passed on to the Saudi authorities.
Roe has not returned to Saudi Arabia since the May 25, 2021 flight for fear of harsh penalties imposed on Saudi citizens due to their homosexuality, “with the maximum lenient punishment being the revocation of his passport and the inability to leave Saudi Arabia, and up to and in addition to the possible harassment of his family, imprisonment or threat of execution because of his sexual orientation and dating Roe. Doe asked senior U. S. consulate officials if it was Roe’s place to return to Saudi Arabia, and they “unanimously agreed. “Roe was forced to discharge a temporary and wonderful cost that allowed him to remain legally in the United States rather than return to Saudi Arabia. In January 2023, Roe obtained a provisional green card for permanent residency in the U. S. He is a U. S. citizen and hopes to become a U. S. citizen so he can stay in the U. S. The U. S. government has been banned indefinitely.
Roe and Doe live in uncertainty about whether Roe will be allowed to remain in the U. S. If you will have to leave and live somewhere else. Since leaving Saudi Arabia, Roe hasn’t noticed her family, who live in Saudi Arabia. , as a U. S. citizen, has had and will have to return to work in Saudi Arabia with less threat of serious retaliation from the government. However, “Doe still fears that his sexual orientation and marital prestige will cost him his job, lead to public humiliation and possible permanent deportation from Saudi Arabia. ” . . .
However, the court concluded that it did not have jurisdiction over Lufthansa; Although Lufthansa operates in California, the court found that “plaintiffs have failed to demonstrate that their claims stand out or are similar to the activities of defendants in California:
As far as Lufthansa AG is concerned, almost all of the conduct giving rise to the whistleblower or similar complaints occurred in Saudi Arabia. Prior to the events in question, the complainants lived together in Saudi Arabia, booked their flights from Saudi Arabia, the complainants faced all the difficulties similar to the check-in procedure at Riyadh airport and the disclosure of their marital prestige and sexual relations. The plaintiffs have a California connection in that Doe is a California citizen and Roe was forced to move permanently. However, the Supreme Court has continually held that the fact that a forum resident suffers harm in the forum state is not sufficient in itself: there will have to be conduct on the part of the defendant. in the forum state which is similar to the forum state. The complainant’s assertions satisfy the minimum contact analysis. . .
Similarly, the fact that the plaintiffs flew from Riyadh to San Francisco is not sufficient to create the kind of dating between the plaintiffs’ claims and California that is sufficient to identify a non-public jurisdiction. . . [T]he plaintiffs do not allege that Lufthansa AG did anything in California that did not mitigate the harm caused by Jamshed’s disclosure of its own data in Saudi Arabia. Nor is the Court convinced that the fact that San Francisco was the destination of the plaintiffs’ fgentle is sufficient to link the conduct in Saudi Arabia to California, in light of the Supreme Court’s warning in the Ford Motor Company case that ‘the word ‘relates to’ incorporates genuine boundaries.
And the court concluded that, in any event, “the exercise of jurisdiction would be unreasonable” in this case:
The Ninth Circuit warned that “[o]ne of the purposes of the minimum contact investigation [under the Due Process Clause] is ‘to ensure that States, through their courts, do not exceed the limits imposed on them through sovereigns in a federal system. » This case has “foreign policy overtones,” as the plaintiffs claim that the Saudi government learned of their marital prestige through secret surveillance of Lufthansa emails and/or through the use of a tracking system. Assuming that the plaintiffs’ claims were not prevailed, the plaintiffs’ breach of contract claim would require this Court to interpret the European and German knowledge privacy laws, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the German Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG). The court would be required to evaluate, as part of a selection of legal investigations, whether plaintiffs can bring a claim under California law and, if they do , the court would be required to apply California law relating to public disclosure of personal information. facts and what constitutes a “scandalous” habit that occurred in Saudi Arabia, a society with very different social and cultural norms….
[T]he investigation would [also] be incredibly complicated, as the plaintiffs would seek to find a causal link between Lufthansa AG’s disclosure of his marital prestige and sexual orientation and the Saudi government’s reinstatement of Doe’s prestige from ‘single’ to ‘married. ”. In addition, discoveries will most likely occur in Germany regarding Lufthansa AG’s privacy and knowledge policies.
The Court understands the plaintiffs’ assertion that California is the only convenient position in which they can bring their claims, and the allegations in the complaint, held to be true, are problematic. However, in light of all of the foregoing, the Court concludes that it has no private jurisdiction over the defendants and that the exercise of its jurisdiction would be unreasonable. . .
It should be noted that, in principle, private jurisdiction and the choice of law are two separate issues. Therefore, even if the court had found that it had jurisdiction over Lufthansa with respect to that conduct, it could have concluded that Saudi law applies to that conduct. conduct in Saudi Arabia.
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Eugene Volokh is the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law at UCLA and a visiting scholar (senior fellow as of May 2024) at the Hoover Institution (Stanford). Naturally, your posts here (as well as the opinions of other bloggers) are your own and are endorsed by any educational institution.