# Gonzalez v. Google Inc.

> Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit · November 6, 2025

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/11198595

## Case

- **Court:** Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
- **Decided:** November 6, 2025
- **Precedential status:** Unpublished
- **Opinion:** Opinion
- **Cited by:** 0 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/11198595

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- concluding, in the Rule 19 context, that “[t]he moving party has the burden of persuasion in arguing for dismissal” (citation omitted)
- observing that “the determination of indispensability itself under Rule 19(b)[] remains in the sound discretion of the trial judge”

## Opinion text

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS NOV 6 2025
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

REYNALDO GONZALEZ; THE ESTATE No. 24-4837
OF NOHEMI GONZALEZ; BEATRIZ D.C. No.
GONZALEZ, individually and as the 4:16-cv-03282-DMR
Representative of the Estate of
Nohemi Gonzalez; JOSE HERNANDEZ;
REY GONZALEZ; PAUL GONZALEZ, MEMORANDUM*

Plaintiffs - Appellants,

v.

GOOGLE INC.,

Defendant - Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of California
Donna M. Ryu, Magistrate Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted October 22, 2025
San Francisco, California

Before: CLIFTON, OWENS, and BUMATAY, Circuit Judges.

Plaintiffs appeal from the district court’s denial of their motion to file a

proposed fourth amended complaint (“FAC”) for want of subject matter

*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
jurisdiction. The district court concluded that the FAC failed to allege sufficient

grounds for either diversity jurisdiction or federal-question jurisdiction. “The

existence of subject matter jurisdiction is a question of law reviewed de novo.”

Harden v. Roadway Package Sys., Inc., 249 F.3d 1137, 1140 (9th Cir. 2001). As

the parties are familiar with the facts, we do not recount them at length here. We

affirm.

1. The FAC failed to allege a basis for diversity jurisdiction.1 Google, the

sole defendant, is a citizen of both California and Delaware. Several named

plaintiffs are also citizens of California, which destroys complete diversity, the

requirement “that each plaintiff must be of a different citizenship from each

defendant.” GranCare, LLC v. Thrower, 889 F.3d 543, 548 (9th Cir. 2018). For

example, despite the allegation in the FAC that Beatriz Gonzalez (in her personal

capacity) and Paul Gonzalez were citizens of New Mexico and thus diverse from

Google, plaintiffs “admit[ted]” to the district court that both “were domiciled in

California at the time they were added to the FAC[.]” Plaintiffs also concede that

Rey Gonzalez was a citizen of California at the time he was added to the FAC,

1
Additionally, when asserting diversity jurisdiction, the FAC, in each instance,
uses the phraseology “resides in” or “resident of,” instead of referring to domicile
or citizenship. We have previously held this to be a “serious pleading defect[,]”
noting that “the diversity jurisdiction statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1332, speaks of
citizenship, not of residency.” Kanter v. Warner-Lambert Co., 265 F.3d 853, 857
(9th Cir. 2001).

2 24-4837
notwithstanding language in the FAC alleging that he was a citizen of New

Mexico.

Plaintiffs further argue that these three are now citizens of New Mexico and

therefore diverse. They invoke Grupo Dataflux v. Atlas Glob. Grp., L.P., 541 U.S.

567 (2004), for their proposed jurisdictional cure: dropping them as originally

nondiverse plaintiffs, only to add them back to the FAC as diverse plaintiffs. The

district court considered but rejected this argument, concluding that Grupo did not

permit such a move. We agree. At issue in Grupo was the question whether “a

party’s post-filing change in citizenship can cure a lack of subject-matter

jurisdiction that existed at the time of filing in an action premised upon diversity of

citizenship.” 541 U.S. at 568. Answering that question in the negative, the

Supreme Court held that it would not cure jurisdictional defects that “arose not

from a change in the parties to the action, but from a change in the citizenship of a

continuing party.” Id. at 575.

Here, at least three plaintiffs were nondiverse at the time of their addition to

the FAC, and the argument is that they are now citizens of New Mexico and

therefore diverse from Google. This exemplifies precisely “a change in the

citizenship of a continuing party[,]” id., which Grupo held did not justify a

deviation from the time-of-filing rule, see id. at 574–75. Under that rule, to which

we must adhere “regardless of the costs it imposes[,]” id. at 571, “[s]ubject matter

3 24-4837
jurisdiction must exist as of the time the action is commenced[,]” Morongo Band

of Mission Indians v. California State Bd. of Equalization, 858 F.2d 1376, 1380

(9th Cir. 1988).

There are additional diversity problems. The decedent, Nohemi Gonzalez,

whose estate is listed as a plaintiff, was a citizen of California at the time of her

death in Paris, France. Beatriz Gonzalez, in her capacity as the estate’s

representative, is deemed a citizen of the same state as the decedent, which is

California. See 28 U.S.C. § 1332(c)(2). The FAC thus also failed to allege

diversity with respect to these two, and plaintiffs admitted as much to the district

court. Plaintiffs requested that these two be dismissed as dispensable parties, but

the district court denied the request. We see no reason to interfere with the district

court’s consideration of the factors for determining party indispensability,

particularly since it found that plaintiffs failed to address any of the relevant factors

under Fed. R. Civ. P. 19. See Walsh v. Centeio, 692 F.2d 1239, 1243 (9th Cir.

1982) (observing that “the determination of indispensability itself under Rule

19(b)[] remains in the sound discretion of the trial judge”); see also Makah Indian

Tribe v. Verity, 910 F.2d 555, 558 (9th Cir. 1990) (concluding, in the Rule 19

context, that “[t]he moving party has the burden of persuasion in arguing for

dismissal” (citation omitted)). Moreover, even if dismissal based on a finding of

dispensability were appropriate, plaintiffs would still fail to show complete

4 24-4837
diversity because, as explained above, three other plaintiffs are nondiverse. For

these reasons, we conclude that the proposed FAC failed to assert complete

diversity between the parties.

2. The FAC also failed to allege a basis for federal-question jurisdiction.

Plaintiffs alleged a negligence per se claim under California law.2 Specifically,

they alleged that Google violated California’s negligence per se statute by violating

18 U.S.C. § 2339A, a federal anti-terrorism statute criminalizing the provision of

material support to terrorists. Plaintiffs argue that their claim is a state-law claim

in which a federal question is embedded, thereby triggering federal-question

jurisdiction. Applying the framework articulated in Grable & Sons Metal Prod.,

Inc. v. Darue Eng’g & Mfg., 545 U.S. 308 (2005), we conclude otherwise.

Under that framework, “federal jurisdiction over a state law claim will lie if

a federal issue is: (1) necessarily raised, (2) actually disputed, (3) substantial, and

(4) capable of resolution in federal court without disrupting the federal-state

balance approved by Congress.” Gunn v. Minton, 568 U.S. 251, 258 (2013).

Plaintiffs fail to satisfy the substantiality requirement under the Grable test for at

2
We do not address the second claim in the FAC concerning alleged violations of
French tort law, as it does not affect our federal-question jurisdiction analysis.

5 24-4837
least three reasons.3

First, plaintiffs assert that their claim concerns the protection of U.S. citizens

abroad from international terrorism, which has important national security and

foreign policy implications. But we have previously held that similar concerns

regarding “energy policy, national security and foreign policy” are “important

policy question[s]” that nonetheless do “not raise a substantial question of federal

law” under the Grable test. City of Oakland v. BP PLC, 960 F.3d 570, 580–81 (9th

Cir. 2020) (footnote omitted). Instead, the instant case involves an allegation of

“federal violations . . . in garden variety state tort law.” Grable, 545 U.S. at 318.

Second, plaintiffs describe their claim as arising from “an unusual

confluence of events,” which they summarize as “misconduct by Google in

California which provided material support to ISIS in the Middle East and Europe,

leading to a killing in France.” In plaintiffs’ own description, then, their claim is

“fact-bound and situation-specific,” which we have previously held weighs against

a finding of substantiality under Grable. City of Oakland, 960 F.3d at 579 (quoting

Empire HealthChoice Assur., Inc. v. McVeigh, 547 U.S. 677, 701 (2006)).

Third, while by itself not dispositive of the federal-question jurisdiction

analysis, per Grable, we also note as relevant evidence the absence of a federal

3
Because the four requirements under Grable are cumulative, meaning all four
must be satisfied for the exercise of federal-question jurisdiction, we can and do
confine our discussion to only one of the unsatisfied requirements in this case.

6 24-4837
private right of action under the law invoked in the FAC. See Grable, 545 U.S. at

318. Indeed, the federal anti-terrorism statute relied on not only does not contain a

private cause of action—which other anti-terrorism statutes occasionally do, see,

e.g., 18 U.S.C. § 2333(a)—but it also appears to reserve enforcement to federal

prosecutors, not private parties. See 18 U.S.C. § 2339A(a) (“A violation of this

section may be prosecuted in any Federal judicial district . . . .”). For the foregoing

reasons, we conclude that plaintiffs’ negligence per se claim does not warrant the

exercise of federal-question jurisdiction.

Having found both diversity jurisdiction and federal-question jurisdiction

lacking, we affirm the district court’s denial of plaintiffs’ motion for leave to

amend.

AFFIRMED.

7 24-4837

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/11198595. Public record. Not legal advice.