Gunns v. Geo Secure Services, LLC et al

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United States District Court
Northern District of California
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA
NEFERTITI GUNNS,
Plaintiff,
v.
THE GEO GROUP, INC.,
Defendant.
Case No. 3:26-cv-09221-JSC
ORDER RE: MOTION TO REMAND
Re: Dkt. No. 14
Nefertiti Gunns filed this putative class action under the Fair Credit Reporting Act
(FCRA), 15 U.S.C. § 1682 in the Alameda County Superior Court. Defendants removed the
action to federal court based on federal question jurisdiction. (Dkt. No. 1 at ¶ 11.) Defendants
then moved to dismiss for failure to state a claim and Plaintiff moved to remand for lack of Article
III standing. (Dkt. Nos. 13, 14.) A week later, Plaintiff filed an Amended Complaint as of right
naming only the Geo Group, Inc., and Geo Group withdrew its motion to dismiss and filed an
opposition to the motion to remand. (Dkt. Nos. 14, 17, 18.) It also moved to dismiss the
Amended Complaint. (Dkt. No 20.) After carefully considering the arguments and briefing
submitted, the Court concludes oral argument is unnecessary, see Civ. L.R. 7-1(b), VACATES the
October 15, 2026 hearing, GRANTS the motion to remand and DENIES the motion to dismiss as
moot.
DISCUSSION
A defendant may remove an action from state court to federal court so long as the federal
court has original jurisdiction. See 28 U.S.C. § 1441(a). Federal courts are courts of “limited
jurisdiction” which “possess only that power authorized by Constitution and statute.” Kokkonen v.
Guardian Life Ins. Co. of Am., 511 U.S. 375, 377 (1994). Article III of the United States
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Constitution “confines the federal judicial power to the resolution of ‘Cases’ and ‘Controversies.’”
TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, 594 U.S. 413, 423 (2021). “For there to be a case or controversy
under Article III, the plaintiff must have a ‘personal stake’ in the case—in other words, standing.”
Id. (citations omitted). “A suit brought by a plaintiff without Article III standing is not a ‘case or
controversy, and an Article III federal court therefore lacks subject matter jurisdiction over the
suit.” Braunstein v. Arizona Dep’t of Transp., 683 F.3d 1177, 1184 (9th Cir. 2012) (citations
omitted). Article III standing can be raised any time including sua sponte by the court. City of Los
Angeles v. Cnty. of Kern, 581 F.3d 841, 845 (9th Cir. 2009).
To establish a plaintiff’s standing sufficient to satisfy constitutional requirements, the party
asserting federal jurisdiction “must show (i) that he suffered an injury in fact that is concrete,
particularized, and actual or imminent; (ii) that the injury was likely caused by the defendant; and
(iii) that the injury would likely be redressed by judicial relief.” TransUnion, 594 U.S. at 423
(quoting Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560–561 (1992)). In a putative class action,
at least one named plaintiff must have Article III standing. See Healy v. Milliman, Inc., 164 F.4th
701, 706 (9th Cir. 2026).
As a threshold matter, Defendant argues the Court should determine removability based on
the complaint as it was pled when Defendant removed the case to federal court, not the
subsequently filed First Amended Complaint. (Compare Dkt. No. 1-1 with Dkt. No. 15.) Not so.
“The plaintiff is the master of the complaint, and therefore controls much about her suit. She gets
to determine which substantive claims to bring against which defendants. And in so doing, she can
establish—or not—the basis for a federal court’s subject-matter jurisdiction.” Royal Canin U. S.
A., Inc. v. Wullschleger, 604 U.S. 22, 35 (2025) (cleaned up). When a plaintiff removes the basis
for federal jurisdiction from her complaint, that plaintiff “alter[s] a federal court’s authority.” Id. at
39. Royal Canin requires courts to “look to the operative complaint, including any post-removal
amendments, when determining jurisdiction. And if the federal jurisdictional hook is excised from
the complaint by post-removal amendment, subject matter jurisdiction is lacking, and the case
should be remanded.” Faulk v. JELD-WEN, Inc., 159 F.4th 618, 622 (9th Cir. 2025); see also id.
at 620 (holding “Royal Canin overruled our prior precedent holding that post removal
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amendments do not undermine federal jurisdiction”). Thus, as relevant here, whether Plaintiff has
Article III standing turns on the First Amended Complaint allegations.
In her First Amended Complaint, Plaintiff brings a single FCRA claim for failure to make
proper disclosures under 15 U.S.C. § 1681b(b)(2)(A). (First Amended Complaint, Dkt. No. 15.)
She alleges “as a condition of employment, Plaintiff was required to complete and sign
onboarding documents, including a consumer report disclosure and authorization form permitting
Defendants to obtain a consumer report for employment purposes.” (Id. at ¶ 21.) The forms
Defendants provided “contained information beyond the disclosure permitted by the [FCRA]
including fields requiring Plaintiff to provide personal identifying information, such as a Social
Security number, date of birth, driver’s license number, and home address, thereby depriving the
disclosure of its required standalone format.” (Id. at ¶ 22.) “By including extraneous information
in the disclosure and authorization form, Defendants failed to provide Plaintiff and the putative
class with a clear, conspicuous, and standalone disclosure, as required by the FCRA.” (Id. at ¶
24.) Plaintiff seeks statutory and/or punitive damages, as well as injunctive and equitable relief.
(Id. at ¶ 38.)
A plaintiff cannot “allege a bare procedural violation, divorced from any concrete harm,
and satisfy the injury-in-fact requirement of Article III.” Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 578 U.S. 330,
341 (2016). As such, “mere procedural violations of the FCRA’s requirements for consumer
reports cannot establish concrete injury and confer Article III standing.” Masuda v. Lucile Salter
Packard Children’s Hosp. at Stanford, No. 20-CV-09389-BLF, 2021 WL 4305979, at *3 (N.D.
Cal. Sept. 22, 2021) (collecting cases).
Plaintiff alleges such a bare procedural violation here. She does not allege she was
confused by Defendant’s disclosure or that she was in some way injured by the disclosures.
Rather, she alleges Defendant’s disclosure and authorization form included “extraneous
information” and thus violated the FCRA. (Dkt. No. 15 at ¶ 24.) Defendant’s insistence that
Plaintiff’s allegation she “signed defective disclosure and authorization forms during [her]
onboarding” “supports an inference she was denied information to which she claims she was
entitled and therefore, consistent with her original allegations of actual damages, suffered a
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concrete injury sufficient to confer Article III standing” is unpersuasive. (Dkt. No. 18 at 2.)
Plaintiff has specifically elected, as is her right, to omit any allegations of actual injury, instead
seeking only statutory damages. See, e.g., Masuda, 2021 WL 4305979, at *3 (concluding the
plaintiff alleged a mere procedural violation and remanding nearly identical FCRA claim alleging
“the failure to obtain proper authorization and distribution of forms that contained superfluous and
extraneous language, omitted required summaries of rights and the law, and failed to separate
content into required standalone documents.”).
Defendants’ reliance on Syed v. M-I, LLC, 853 F.3d 492 (9th Cir. 2017), is likewise
unpersuasive. Syed did not hold any FCRA disclosure violation gives rise to Article III standing
as Defendant suggests. Instead, when the allegations are sufficient to support an inference the
statutory violation caused actual confusion and the plaintiff would not have authorized the
consumer report had the disclosure been presented properly, the allegations may be sufficient to
support a concrete injury. Syed, 853 F.3d at 499–500 (holding the complaint plausibly supported
an inference he “was not aware that he was signing a waiver authorizing the credit check when he
signed it” and that he “was confused by the inclusion of the liability waiver with the disclosure
and would not have signed it had it contained sufficiently clear disclosure”).1 But when, as here,
the allegations support only an inference of a bare procedural violation of Section
1681b(b)(2)(A)’s requirements that a disclosure be standalone, clear and conspicuous, Article III
standing is not satisfied. Williams v. Nichols Demos, Inc., No. 17-cv-07101-EJD, 2018 WL
3046507, at *4 (N.D. Cal. June 20, 2018) (collecting cases in which district courts concluded the
plaintiffs’ allegations of bare procedural violations of FCRA to be insufficient to confer Article III
standing where those claims were based on alleged violations of FCRA's standalone disclosure
requirement).
Accordingly, as Defendant has not met its burden of demonstrating Article III standing,
this action must be remanded for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.
1 Tailford v. Experian Info. Sols., Inc., 26 F.4th 1092, 1100 (9th Cir. 2022), is similarly inapposite
as there the plaintiffs alleged a concrete injury because “they alleged that without complete
information in their § 1681g disclosures, they are unable to adequately opt out of certain
disclosures to other parties and ensure fair and accurate reporting of their credit information.”
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CONCLUSION
Accordingly, Plaintiff’s motion to remand for lack of subject matter jurisdiction is
GRANTED. See 28 U.S.C. § 1447(c) (a case removed to federal court must be remanded to state
court “[i]f at any time before final judgment it appears that the district court lacks subject matter
jurisdiction.”). Defendant’s motion to dismiss is DENIED AS MOOT. (Dkt. No. 20.) This action
is REMANDED to the Alameda County Superior Court.
This Order disposes of Docket Nos. 14, 20, 21.
IT IS SO ORDERED.
Dated: October 8, 2026
JACQUELINE SCOTT CORLEY
United States District Judge
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