This case begins and ends with our lack of appellate jurisdiction, though the path to that conclusion is not as straightforward as one might wish. After Heartland Steel, Inc., filed for bankruptcy, Voesh-Alpine Industries, Inc., submitted a proof of claim seeking payment for services that it had provided to Heartland. Following some procedural finagling, Heartland’s trustee in bankruptcy sued Voest in Indiana state court alleging breach of contract and con *920 structive fraud in relation to the provision of those services. Voest promptly removed the case to the bankruptcy court. At the trustee’s motion, the district court withdrew the reference from the bankruptcy court and remanded the trustee’s claims to state court. Voest asks that we reverse the district court, offering a clever but ultimately unpersuasive justification for why the jurisdictional bars imposed by 28 U.S.C. §§ 1452(b) and 1291 do not preclude our review of either aspect of the court’s order. Because we conclude that § 1452(b) and § 1291 govern, we dismiss Voest’s appeal for lack of jurisdiction.
I
Heartland set out to become the largest independent flatrolled steel processor in the United States, with a target capacity of 1.1 million tons per year. To achieve this goal, Heartland entered into a contract with Kvaerner U.S., Inc., which did business under the name Kvaerner Metals, under which the latter would provide equipment for Heartland’s facility in Terre Haute, Indiana. Kvaerner also contracted with Heartland to provide software for an information system known as “Level 3,” which was intended to coordinate the automated production information from each of Heartland’s steel processing lines. Voest is the successor-in-interest to Kvaerner with respect to these contractual obligations.
Heartland voluntarily filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 on January 24, 2001. Voest subsequently filed a proof of claim in the amount of $20,471,242.94, plus interest and attorneys’ fees. According to Voest, approximately $10.2 million of that claim was secured by mechanics’ liens and the remainder was unsecured. On November 20, 2001, the bankruptcy court entered an order confirming Heartland’s Chapter 11 plan. Almost four months later, on March 11, 2002, Heartland’s trustee in bankruptcy, Margaret Good, filed an objection to Voest’s assertion that valid mechanics’ liens secured the $10.2 million claim. Voest filed a motion to strike the objection, and on July 30, 2002, the bankruptcy court issued an order rejecting Good’s objection as untimely and further denying her request to extend the deadline to file additional objections. The district court reversed in part, finding that Good’s objection to the secured status of Voest’s claim was timely filed, but affirming the bankruptcy court’s denial of her motion for an extension of time to file other objections.
On January 17, 2003, six months after the bankruptcy court’s order, Good filed a complaint against Voest in state court in Indiana, alleging that “Kvaerner and/or Voest was unable to cause the software system to operate according to Heartland’s performance requirements and, as a direct and foreseeable consequence, Heartland lost its major customers and its funding and was forced to file for bankruptcy.” On February 21, 2003, Voest removed the case to the bankruptcy court pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1452(a). Shortly thereafter, Good filed two motions in district court. First, Good moved to withdraw the reference on the grounds that the state court action was noncore and that “Plaintiff has requested a jury trial, the bankruptcy court cannot hold a jury trial without the parties’ consent, and Plaintiff has not and will not provide such consent.” Second, Good asked the district court either to abstain or to remand the case to state court. She argued that the requirements for mandatory abstention under 28 U.S.C. § 1334(c)(2) were satisfied or, in the alternative, that the district court should exercise its discretion to abstain under 28 U.S.C. § 1334(c)(1) or to remand under 28 U.S.C. § 1452(b).
The district court granted both of Good’s motions. The court took note of *921 the fact that, under 28 U.S.C. § 157(d), a “district court may withdraw, in whole or in part, any case or proceeding referred [to the bankruptcy court] under this section, on its own motion or on timely motion of any party, for cause shown.” Although the court found that the bankruptcy court had jurisdiction over Good’s state-law claim because it was “related to a case under title 11,” it nonetheless concluded that Good’s “right to a jury trial dictates that the reference should be withdrawn.” Turning to Good’s motion to abstain or to remand, the court observed that, under 28 U.S.C. § 1452(b), a district court to which a state “claim or cause of action is removed may remand such claim or cause of action on any equitable ground.” The court concluded that “[b]eeause the case at bar involves claims based entirely on state law, and because the claims fall within ‘related to’ jurisdiction, remand will have minimal effects on the administration of the bankruptcy. The state court can adequately address the state law issues based on its expertise.” On this basis, it remanded the case to state court. After unsuccessfully moving for the district court to certify its order withdrawing the reference for interlocutory appeal pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b), Voest appealed directly to this court, asking that we reverse the district court’s order.
II
There are really two orders of the district court that Voest would like this court to consider: first, the order under § 157(d) withdrawing the reference to the bankruptcy court, and second, the order under § 1452(b) remanding the entire proceeding to the state court. Good argues that § 1452(b) bars our review of both of these orders. Even if her position is correct in the end, however, we find it useful to consider the orders separately. We look first at the district court’s decision to withdraw the reference to the bankruptcy court, and then at the order of remand.
A
According to Good, § 1452(b) bars our review of both the district court’s withdrawal of the reference and its remand of the case to state court. Voest counters that under the Supreme Court’s decision in
City of Waco v. United States Fidelity & Guar. Co.,
In Waco, the Supreme Court indicated that appellate review of a district court order that precedes a remand order may be appropriate in some circumstances, even if the remand order itself is unre-viewable.
Id.
at 143,
True, no appeal lies from the order of remand; but in logic and in fact the decree of dismissal preceded that of remand and was made by the District Court while it had control of the cause. Indisputably this order is the subject of an appeal; and, if not reversed or set aside, is conclusive upon the petitioner. We are of opinion that the petitioner was entitled to have the Circuit Court of Appeals determine whether the dismissal of its cross-action against the Fidelity Company was proper.
Id.
at 143,
A number of courts, including this court, have relied on
Waco
as a basis for reviewing district court decisions that “in logic and in fact” preceded remand orders. For example, in
J.O. v. Alton Cmty. Unit Sch. Dist. 11,
The question here is whether the
Waco
doctrine permits us to review the district court’s order withdrawing the reference. Good maintains that the answer is no, because the
Waco
doctrine elaborates the general system of removal and remand governed by 28 U.S.C. § 1447. But the Supreme Court rejected the argument that there is any distinction between the limits on reviewability imposed by the general removal statutes and the limits in § 1452 in
Things Remembered, Inc. v. Petrarca,
If an order remands a bankruptcy case to state court because of a timely raised defect in removal procedure or lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, then a court of appeals lacks jurisdiction to review that order under § 1447(d), regardless of whether the case was removed under § 1441(a) or § 1452(a).
Courts have continued to rely on the
Waco
decision to identify which orders are sufficiently distinct from the order of removal to be entitled to appellate review, assuming that either a final judgment or an authorized interlocutory appeal is present. See
Allen v. Ferguson,
According to Good, this line of cases is distinguishable from the present case, which involves an order withdrawing the district court’s reference to the bankruptcy court, rather than something like an order dismissing a claim or party. We do not find that distinction to be persuasive. In fact, we would not break new ground in relying on
Waco
to review a district court order that preceded a remand based on § 1452(b). In
In re Adams,
*924
It is true that courts have generally limited their application of
Waco
to orders dismissing parties or claims. See,
e.g., Aquamar,
The difficult question is whether the order for which review is sought precedes “in logic and in fact” the remand order. See
Nutter,
Voest naturally insists that the court’s order withdrawing the reference was prior “in logic and in fact” to its remand decision, because “without the order the judge would not have had the case to remand in the first instance.” Voest further argues that the withdrawal of the reference “was separable from the remand, because it was based solely on the district court’s finding of ‘cause’ pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 157(d),” and therefore was “completely unrelated to the statutory ‘equitable grounds’ upon which the district judge based her remand order.” In evaluating Voest’s position, we need not decide whether the order withdrawing the reference is indeed prior in logic and fact to the remand order. Even if Voest convinced us that it was, and thus that § 1452(b) does not ban appellate jurisdiction, it must still find an affirmative authorization that allows this court to hear the case. We turn, therefore, to Good’s' arguments under § 1291.
B
As Voest acknowledges, the district judge’s order withdrawing the reference is not a final order in the sense that it ends the litigation. Indeed, we have consistently held that an order withdrawing the reference is interlocutory and thus unreviewable until after a judgment has issued. See
Matter of McGaughey,
Waco is of no use to Voest here, as Waco itself made clear that the order for which appellate review is sought must independently be reviewable. See
Waco,
Although it is plain that the controversy between Voest and Good has not come to a definitive conclusion in the trial courts, Voest claims that it can receive appellate review of the order withdrawing the reference under the collateral order doctrine established in
Cohen v. Beneficial Indus. Loan Corp.,
The collateral order doctrine is a narrow exception [to § 1291], whose reach is limited to trial court orders affecting rights that will be irretrievably lost in the absence of an immediate appeal. To fall within the exception, an order must at a minimum satisfy three conditions: It must conclusively determine the disputed question, resolve an important issue completely separate from the merits of the action, and be effectively unre-viewable on appeal from a final judgment.
Id.
at 430-31,
In addressing this issue, we find instructive the Second Circuit’s decision in
In re Ben Cooper, Inc.,
As in Ben Cooper, the district court here withdrew the reference from the bankruptcy court and then permitted the state court litigation to proceed. On the surface, this suggests that the Second Circuit’s rationale for finding appellate jurisdiction might likewise support the applicability of the collateral order doctrine in the instant case. But on closer examination, we conclude that a dismissal of a federal court proceeding, coupled with relief from a stay of independent state court proceedings, is materially different from a decision by a district court to remand a removed case back to state court. Nothing stands in the way of reviewing the action on the stay at the same time as the withdrawal order in the former situation, while § 1452(b) must be taken into account in the latter. In Ben Cooper, the federal court merely removed an impediment from continuing with the state court case. That order, along with the order of dismissal, fully disposed of the matter before the federal court.
Here (as Voest acknowledges when it argues that § 1452(b) does not prevent us from reviewing the order withdrawing the reference), we have before us two separate orders, one of which it claimed was within the statutory bar and the other of which was not. See Waco,
In the final analysis, Voest’s real objection appears to be to the fact that it will have to litigate these claims in state court, not to the fact that they might have been in the district court rather than the bankruptcy court. This is precisely the decision that normally does escape appellate review, because Congress has made the judgment that parties must live with the district court’s decision about the allocation of cases between federal and state courts. If every remand decision could be relabeled as a “collateral order,” there would be nothing left of either § 1452(b) or § 1447(d). We therefore conclude that, in these circumstances, the order with *927 drawing the reference was an interlocutory order, that it was not appealable as a collateral order or otherwise, and that we therefore lack appellate jurisdiction to review it.
C
Voest also argues that it is entitled to appellate review of the court’s order remanding the breach of contract and constructive fraud claims to the state court, notwithstanding § 1452(b). Our starting point must be with the language of the statute, which reads as follows:
The court to which such claim or cause of action is removed may remand such claim or cause of action on any equitable ground. An order entered under this subsection remanding a claim or cause of action, or a decision not to remand, is not reviewable by appeal or otherwise by the court of appeals under section 158(d), 1291, or 1292 of this title or by the Supreme Court under section 1254 of this title.
“Read literally this language denies us jurisdiction to review the orders remanding ... cases to state court regardless of the basis of the orders or the grounds for challenging them.”
Matter of United States Brass Corp.,
In the present case, the district court explained that it was remanding “[bjecause the case at bar involves claims based entirely on state law, and because the claims fall within ‘related to’ jurisdiction, remand will have minimal effects on the administration of the bankruptcy. The state court can adequately address the state law issues based on its expertise.” In addition, the court noted that the only disadvantage that the parties “will suffer is limited to the shifting forums in which the adjudication of the case has proceeded.” These grounds easily come within the wide net cast by the term “equitable.” Because the district court relied on the statutory ground for remand, the ban on appellate review also applies here.
Ill
For these reasons, we hold that we lack jurisdiction to review either aspect of the district court’s order withdrawing the reference from the bankruptcy court and remanding Good’s breach of contract and constructive fraud claims to state court. The practical effect of our holding — that the state-law claims will be adjudicated in state court while the bankruptcy action proceeds in federal court — is not particularly unusual or onerous. Both § 1452(b) and § 1334(c) expressly contemplate parallel proceedings in the bankruptcy and state courts. Finally, we note that Heartland’s plan of reorganization provides that the bankruptcy court “will retain jurisdiction to determine the allowance of all Claims” and “will have concurrent jurisdiction with non-bankruptcy courts to effectuate the collection of the Estate Assets.” The plan thus makes clear that the final word as to the actual allocation of Heart *928 land’s assets, including those to which Voest may be entitled, will be that of the bankruptcy court.
We Dismiss Voest’s appeal of the district court’s order withdrawing the reference and remanding the state-law claims for want of jurisdiction.