The Seventh Circuit Sorts Out the Divide Between Jurisdictional and Non-jurisdictional CAFA Requirements

Once a case is removed to federal court, plaintiffs must act promptly if they wish to seek remand.  But as is common, there are jurisdictional exceptions.  The plaintiff can make a remand motion attacking jurisdiction at any time, and district courts may raise jurisdictional defects on their own initiative, even months or years down the line.  These special jurisdictional rules can have big consequences in the right (or wrong) case, undoing removal long after it occurs.

The Seventh Circuit resolved one such remand dispute in Craig v. City of Richmond, 179 F.4th 535 (2026), becoming the first circuit to hold that the “local event” exception to the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA) is jurisdictional.  In doing so, the Seventh Circuit offered broader guidance on CAFA’s jurisdictional requirements that could influence related cases and potentially other circuits grappling with the issue.

Read the full blog post.