ROBERT GUTHRIE, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. RAINBOW FENCING INC., LAWSON BURGE, Defendants-Appellees.
No. 23-350
United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit
AUGUST 30, 2024
AUGUST TERM 2023. ARGUED: JANUARY 8, 2024
Robert Guthrie filed this action against his former employer, Rainbow Fencing Inc., seeking unpaid wages as well as statutory damages for the failure to provide the wage notices and wage statements that New York law requires. The district court entered a default judgment with respect to the unpaid wages but determined that Guthrie lacked standing to bring a claim for statutory damages because he had not alleged an injury-in-fact. We agree with the district court that a plaintiff lacks standing to pursuе statutory damages for a technical violation—such as a failure to provide statutorily required notices—unless the plaintiff has plausibly alleged that the violation led to an injury-in-fact. Because Guthrie did not provide such a plausible allegation, we affirm the judgment of the district court.
ABDUL K. HASSAN, Abdul Hassan Law Group, PLLC, Queens Village, New York, for Plaintiff-Appellant.
No appearance for Defendants-Appellees.
MENASHI, Circuit Judge:
Plaintiff-Appellant Robert Guthrie sued his former employer, Rainbow Fencing Inc. (“RFI“), for unpaid wages as well as for statutory damages arising from its failure to provide the wage notices and wage statements that New York law requires. See
On appeal, Guthrie argues that (1) he did not need to meet the requirements of Article III standing to pursuе his claim for statutory damages because the district court could exercise supplemental jurisdiction over that claim, and (2) he met the injury-in-fact requirement regardless. We agree with the district court that Guthrie cannot rely on supplemental jurisdiction in the absence of Article III standing. We further agree that a plaintiff must adequately allege a concrete injury-in-fact resulting from the failure to provide the wage notices and wage statements to
BACKGROUND
I
RFI, a business bаsed in Brooklyn with about twenty-two employees, provides fencing services and repairs. RFI employed Guthrie as a welder from 2014 to 2021. During that time, Guthrie earned between $12.50 and $17.50 per hour and worked between 44.5 and 54.5 hours per week. Guthrie alleged that “[a]t all times relevant herein, [he] was not paid any wages for his overtime hours ... except that about 1-2 times each month, [he] was paid for about 8 overtime hours at his straight regular hourly rate instead of at 1.5 times his regular hourly rate.” App‘x 8. Guthrie sued RFI in the Eastern District of New York to recover thе unpaid wages under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. See
Section 195 of the Labor Law—which was adopted as part of New York‘s Wage Theft Prevention Act, 2010 N.Y. Sess. Laws 1446-58 (“WTPA“)—requires an employer to provide an employеe, at the time of hiring, with a notice (1) describing the employee‘s rate of pay for regular and for overtime hours; (2) stating whether the employer intends to credit allowances for items such as tips, meals, and lodging toward the employee‘s minimum wage; (3) describing certain health care benefits; and (4) providing other basic information.
RFI—and Lawson Burge, the CEO of RFI—failed to answer or otherwise to respond to Guthrie‘s complaint. Guthrie moved for a default judgment. A magistrate judge recommended that a default judgment be entered against RFI and that Guthrie be awarded a total of $91,243 in damages—a figure that included $3,200 in unpaid minimum wages, $42,421.50 in unpaid overtime wages, and $45,621.50 in liquidated damages—but that Guthrie‘s claim for statutory dаmages relating to the notices and statements be dismissed for lack of standing. See Guthrie v. Rainbow Fencing Inc., No. 21-CV-5929, 2022 WL 18999832 (E.D.N.Y. Dec. 13, 2022). The district court adopted the report and recommendation of the magistrate judge. See Guthrie v. Rainbow Fencing Inc., No. 21-CV-5929, 2023 WL 2206568 (E.D.N.Y. Feb. 24, 2023). Guthrie timely appealed the judgment dismissing his claim for statutory damages.
DISCUSSION
Guthrie raises two arguments on appeal. First, he argues that he did not need to satisfy the requirements of Article III standing with respect to his state-law claim for statutory damages because the district court could exercise supplemental jurisdiction over that claim pursuant to
Guthrie argues that he did not need to demonstrate Article III standing for his state-law claim because the district court may exercise supplemental jurisdiction over that claim pursuant to
That is incorrect. Guthrie misses the distinction between the jurisdiction that Congress has conferred on the federal courts by statute, on the one hand, and the case-or-controversy requirement of Article III, on the other. “Subject-matter jurisdiction,” however, “is an Art[icle] III as well as a statutory requirement.” Ins. Corp. of Ir. v. Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinee, 456 U.S. 694, 702 (1982) (emphasis added). Federal courts “have only the power that is authorized by Article III of the Constitution and the statutes enacted by Congress pursuant thereto.” Bender v. Williamsport Area Sch. Dist., 475 U.S. 534, 541 (1986) (emphasis added). Accordingly, “[o]ur jurisdiction is limited by both statute—we have only the jurisdiction granted to us by Congrеss—and by Article III of the United States Constitution, which provides that we may hear only ‘Cases’ or ‘Controversies.‘” In re Auction Houses Antitrust Litig., 42 F. App‘x 511, 515 (2d Cir. 2002) (internal quotation marks, alteration, and citation omitted).
In addition to falling within the statutory authorization that the supplemental jurisdiction statute provides, “a plaintiff must demonstrate standing for each claim he seeks to press and for each form of relief that is sought.” Town of Chester v. Laroe Ests., Inc., 581 U.S. 433, 439 (2017) (quoting Davis v. FEC, 554 U.S. 724, 734 (2008)). The Supreme Court has said so directly: While the Court has recognized that “federal-question jurisdiction over a claim may authorize a federal court to exercise jurisdiction over state-law claims that may be viewed as part of the same case,” it has “never” applied that “rationale ... to permit a federal court to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over a claim that does not itself satisfy those elements of the Article III inquiry, such as constitutional standing, that ‘serve to identify those disputes which are appropriately resolved through the judicial process.‘” DaimlerChrysler Corp. v. Cuno, 547 U.S. 332, 351-52 (2006) (alteration omitted) (quoting Whitmore v. Arkansas, 495 U.S. 149, 155 (1990)). It has never done so because its “standing cases confirm that a plaintiff must demonstrate standing for еach claim he seeks to press.” Id. at 352.
We agree with the district court that the supplemental jurisdiction statute does not excuse Guthrie from demonstrating that
II
Guthrie argues in the alternative that he has standing because his complaint adequately alleged an injury-in-fact. This argument implicates a disagreement among the district courts because, as the district court observed in this case, “courts in the Second Circuit have reached different conclusions when weighing the sufficiency of a plaintiff‘s allegations to show Article III standing to pursue [New York Labor Law] wage notice and wage statement claims in federal court.” Guthrie, 2023 WL 2206568, at *5. In our view, the Supreme Court clarified the appropriate standard in TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, 594 U.S. 413, 426 (2021). In light of that decision, we agree with the district court that a plaintiff cannot rely on “technical violations” of the Labor Law but must allege “actual injuries suffered as a result of the alleged ... wage notice and wage statement violations.” Guthrie, 2023 WL 2206568, at *6. Because Guthrie failed to allege an actual injury, his clаim for statutory damages was properly dismissed.
A
In TransUnion, the plaintiff filed a class action complaint against TransUnion LLC, a credit reporting agency, seeking statutory and punitive damages pursuant to the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA“). TransUnion had created a product called “OFAC Name Screen Alert,” which aimed to identify consumers whom the Office of Foreign Assets Control deemed to be security risks, but the product “generated many false positives.” 594 U.S. at 419-20. As a result, credit reports identified “[t]housands of law-abiding Americans” as potential “terrorists, drug trаffickers, or serious criminals.” Id. at 420.
One such person, Sergio Ramirez, sought to address the problem by requesting his credit file and other information that the FCRA obligated TransUnion to provide. TransUnion mailed Ramirez his credit file and the statutorily required summary of rights, and it disclosed the OFAC alert in Ramirez‘s file in a second mailing sent the following day. Id. Ramirez alleged in his lawsuit that TransUnion not only had “failed to follow reasonable procedures to ensure the accuracy of information in his credit file,” but it also “failed to provide him with all the information in his credit file“—because it omitted the alert in the first mailing—and “violated its obligation to provide him with a summary of his rights ‘with each written disclosure‘” as the FCRA required. Id. at 421 (quoting
The Supreme Court reversed the judgment because many of the class members lacked standing to sue TransUnion. The Court again “rejected the proposition that ‘a plaintiff automatically satisfies the injury-in-fact requirement whenever a statute grants a person a statutory right and purports to authorize that person to sue to vindicate that right.‘” Id. at 426 (quoting Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 578 U.S. 330, 341 (2016)). Instead, “Article III standing requires a concrete injury even in the context of a statutory violation.” Id. (quoting Spokeo, 578 U.S. at 341). Although “Congress may enact legal prohibitions and obligations” and “may create causes of action for plaintiffs to sue defendants who violate those
The Court applied this principle of “[n]o concrete harm, no standing” to Ramirez‘s class action. Id. at 442. It determined that the “1,853 class members whose credit reports were provided to third-party businesses suffered a concrete harm” and therefore had standing to suе TransUnion for failing to follow reasonable procedures. Id. But “[t]he 6,332 class members whose credit reports were not provided to third-party businesses did not suffer a concrete harm and thus do not have standing as to the reasonable-procedures claim.” Id. As for the claim that TransUnion did not comply with the statutory requirements for providing disclosures to consumers, the plaintiffs had offered “no evidence that, other than Ramirez, a single other class member so much as opened the dual mailings, nor that they were confused, distressed, or relied on the information in any way.” Id. at 440 (internal quotation marks omitted). Accordingly, “none of the 8,185 class members other than the named plaintiff Ramirez suffered a concrete harm” from the noncompliant disclosures that would confer standing to pursue the claim. Id. at 442. “Without any evidence of harm caused by the format of the mailings,” statutorily noncompliant mailings “are bare procedural violations, divorced from any concrete harm,” that do “not suffice for Article III standing.” Id. at 440 (internal quotation marks and alteration omitted).
B
After TransUnion, we explained that “a plaintiff has standing to bring a claim for monetary damages following a statutory violation only when he can show a current or past harm beyond the statutory violation itself.” Harty v. W. Point Realty, Inc., 28 F.4th 435, 443 (2d Cir. 2022) (emphasis added) (citing TransUnion, 594 U.S. at 424-30). Consistent with that principle, many district courts in this circuit have recognized that allegations amounting only to a technical violation of § 195 of the New York Labor Law—without a resulting concrete injury—fail to establish Article III standing to pursue a claim for damages based on the violation.1
But other district courts have reached conclusions inconsistent with TransUnion. One district court has held that even though the complaint was “unspecific as to the downstream injuries that resulted from these alleged statutory violations, such allegations are not necessary to supply standing.” Bueno v. Buzinover, No. 22-CV-2216, 2023 WL 2387113, at *2 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 7, 2023). Another district court has held that even if plaintiffs “allege only the bare assertion that they never received their statutorily required wage statements and notices,” there is standing if “the realization of the downstream harm the statute seeks to prevent—wage theft—is evident on the face of the pleadings.” Bello v. Pro-Line Pumping Corp., No. 22-CV-4081, 2023 WL 8260830, at *9 (E.D.N.Y. June 20, 2023), report and recommendation
Accordingly, we agree with those district courts that have held that a plaintiff must show some causal connection between the lack of accurate notices and the downstream harm. The legislature may have intended to empower employees to advocate for themselves, but unless the plaintiff-employee can show that he or she would have undertaken such advocacy and plausibly would have avoidеd some actual harm or obtained some actual benefit if accurate notices had been provided, the plaintiff-employee has not established a concrete injury-in-fact sufficient to confer standing to seek statutory damages under § 195.4 Because the elements of Article III standing “are not mere pleading requirements
At the same time, some district courts have imposed too high a burden on plaintiffs-employees in § 195 cases, suggesting that they must demonstrate that “their lack of notice resulted in an injury greater than [their employers‘] minimum wage, overtime, and spread-of-hours wage violations” because only such a greater injury would entail “consequences beyond this lawsuit.” Pastrana v. Mr. Taco LLC, No. 18-CV-09374, 2022 WL 16857111, at *7 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 23, 2022), report and recommendation adopted (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 10, 2022). To reach that conclusion, these district courts have often invoked our court‘s holding, in the context of tester standing, that а plaintiff-tester who failed to receive statutorily required disclosures “must show that he has an ‘interest in using the information beyond bringing his lawsuit.‘” Harty, 28 F.4th at 444 (alterations omitted) (quoting Laufer v. Looper, 22 F.4th 871, 881 (10th Cir. 2022)).6 In our view, an employee who has actually lost wages is not analogous to a plaintiff-tester. A “tester”
C
Guthrie argues that he satisfied the injury-in-fact requirement of TransUnion. We disagree. Before the district court—and again before this court—Guthrie identified potential harms that could result from an employer‘s failure to provide wage notices and wage statements. The lack of such notices and statements might impair “an employeе‘s ability to seek relief for violations they may not have information about,” for example, or result in a “lack of proper documentation to apply for public benefits.” Guthrie, 2023 WL 2206568, at *4. Guthrie explains that wage statements may be “critical” for employees to determine “whether they are being robbed by the employer,” “whether the hours and wages are correct,” “whether the deductions for taxes are being made and in the correct amount,” and “whether other deductions for health insurance, life insurance, retirement funds, and a variety of important matters are being made and in the correct amounts.” Appellant‘s Br. 38. In addition, employees may need wage statements to file their taxes or to apply for public benefits, bank loans, credit cards, and other employment. See id. at 39.
We recognize that the failure of an employer to provide the wage notices and wage statements that § 195 requires may result in various harms to an employee. But Guthrie has not plausibly alleged that RFI‘s failure to provide the wage notices and wagе statements in this case caused him to suffer any of those harms. Guthrie‘s complaint offered only the following allegations with respect to the wage notices and wage statements:
- “At all times relevant herein, neither Defendant provided Plaintiff with the notice(s) required by NYLL 195(1).” App‘x 8 (¶ 21).
- “At all times relevant herein, neither Defendant provided Plaintiff with the statement(s) required by NYLL 195(3).” Id. (¶ 22).
- “At all times relevant herein, Defendants, individually and/or jointly, failed and willfully failed to provide Plaintiff with the notice(s) required by NYLL 195(1)—Plaintiff is therefore entitled to and seeks to recover in this action the maximum recovery for this violation, plus attorneys’ fees and costs pursuant to NYLL 198 including NYLL 198(1-b), as well as an injunction directing defendants to comply with NYLL 195(1).” Id. at 12 (¶ 50).
- “At all times relevant herein, Defendants, individually and/or jointly, failed and willfully failed to provide Plaintiff with the statement(s) required by NYLL 195(3)—Plaintiff is therefore entitled to and seeks to recover in this action the maximum recovery for this violation, plus attorneys’ fees and costs pursuant to NYLL 198 including NYLL 198(1-d), as well as an injunction directing Defendants to comply with NYLL 195(1).” Id. (¶ 51).
In Maddox v. Bank of New York Mellon Trust Company, N.A., 19 F.4th 58, 64 (2d Cir. 2021), we considered a New York statute that “creates a private right to collect an escalating cash penalty” if a mortgagee delays recording a mortgage satisfaction until “more than thirty days after the mortgage is paid off.” 19 F.4th at 64. On appeal, the plaintiffs identified several harms that could result from such a delay. The delayed recording “may create and sustain an actionable cloud on title to the property securing the discharged mortgage debt,” “risks creating thе false appearance that the borrower has not paid the underlying debt and is thus more indebted and less creditworthy,” may “mak[e] it difficult [for the borrower] to obtain financing” while his credit is adversely affected, and could cause anxiety for the borrower. Id. at 64-65. But plaintiffs “must ‘plead enough facts to make it plausible that they did indeed suffer the sort of injury that would entitle them to relief.‘” Id. at 65-66 (quoting Harry v. Total Gas & Power N. Am., Inc., 889 F.3d 104, 110 (2d Cir. 2018)). And the plaintiffs in that case had either “not alleged that th[e] purported risk materialized” or provided allegations that were “implausible.” Id.
So too here. Like the district court, we do “not disagree” that “possible injuries” could result from violations of § 195. Guthrie, 2023 WL 2206568, at *4. But Guthrie “fails to link the general harms an employee might experience to any harms that Mr. Guthrie did, in fact, experience.” Id. Without plausible allegations that he suffered a concrete injury because of RFI‘s failure to provide the required notices and statements, Guthrie lacks standing to sue for that statutory violation.
CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the judgment of the district court.