Rafael Arroyo, Jr. v. Carmen Rosas

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

RAFAEL ARROYO, JR., No. 19-55974

Plaintiff-Appellant,

D.C. No.

v. 2:18-cv-06338-

PSG-GJS

CARMEN ROSAS,

Defendant-Appellee,

OPINION

and

A & G INTERPRISES, LLC, a

California Limited Liability

Company; DOES, 1–10,

Defendants.

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Central District of California

Philip S. Gutierrez, Chief District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted July 8, 2020

Pasadena, California

Filed December 10, 2021

2 ARROYO V. ROSAS

Before: Bobby R. Baldock, * Marsha S. Berzon, and

Daniel P. Collins, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Collins

SUMMARY **

Supplemental Jurisdiction

The panel reversed the district court’s order granting

summary judgment to plaintiff on his claim under Title III of

the Americans with Disabilities Act but declining to exercise

supplemental jurisdiction over his claim under California’s

Unruh Civil Rights Act.

The panel held that, because any violation of the ADA is

automatically a violation of the Unruh Act, the district

court’s summary judgment ruling effectively dictated the

outcome of plaintiff’s Unruh Act claim as well. The panel

held that the district court abused its discretion in

nonetheless declining to exercise supplemental jurisdiction

over the Unruh Act claim under 28 U.S.C. § 1367(c)(4),

which permits a district court to decline to exercise

supplemental jurisdiction over a claim if, “in exceptional

circumstances, there are other compelling reasons for

declining jurisdiction.”

*

The Honorable Bobby R. Baldock, United States Circuit Judge for

the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, sitting by designation.

**

This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It

has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

ARROYO V. ROSAS 3

According to the district court, recent changes in

California law had made it much more difficult to file Unruh

Act claims in state court, leading to a wholesale shifting of

such cases to the federal courts. The district court ruled that

retaining jurisdiction over the Unruh Act claim would allow

plaintiff to evade the California requirements, contrary to the

interest in federal-state comity.

The panel agreed with the district court that the

extraordinary situation created by the unique confluence of

California rules involved here, pairing a damages remedy

with special procedural requirements aimed at limiting suits

by high-frequency litigants, presented “exceptional

circumstances” that authorized consideration, on a case-by-

case basis, of whether the principles of judicial economy,

convenience, comity, and fairness underlying the pendent

jurisdiction doctrine provided “compelling reasons” that

warranted declining supplemental jurisdiction. However,

because the district court effectively completed its

adjudication of this case before it considered the question of

supplemental jurisdiction, the interests in judicial economy,

convenience, comity, and fairness all overwhelmingly

favored retaining jurisdiction and entering the foreordained

judgment on the Unruh Act claim. The panel therefore

reversed and remanded.

4 ARROYO V. ROSAS

COUNSEL

Russell C. Handy (argued) and Dennis J. Price II, Potter

Handy LLP, San Diego, California, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

James S. Link (argued), Baraban & Teske, Pasadena,

California; Stephen E. Abraham, Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard &

Smith LLP, Los Angeles, California; for Defendant-

Appellee.

OPINION

COLLINS, Circuit Judge:

Rafael Arroyo, Jr., is a paraplegic who uses a wheelchair

for mobility. Arroyo filed suit against Carmen Rosas, the

owner of the Gardena Main Plaza Liquor store in Gardena,

California, alleging that the store’s premises contained

barriers that denied him full and equal access, in violation of

Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”),

42 U.S.C. § 12181 et seq., and California’s Unruh Civil

Rights Act (“Unruh Act”), CAL. CIV. CODE § 51. The

district court granted summary judgment to Arroyo on his

ADA claim, concluding that the undisputed evidence

established all of the elements of that claim. Because any

violation of the ADA is automatically a violation of the

Unruh Act, see CAL. CIV. CODE § 51(f), the district court’s

summary judgment ruling effectively dictated the outcome

of Arroyo’s Unruh Act claim as well. Nonetheless, the

district court concluded that “extraordinary circumstances’

and “compelling reasons” existed under 28 U.S.C.

§ 1367(c)(4) to decline supplemental jurisdiction over

Arroyo’s Unruh Act claim. Specifically, the district court

noted that recent changes in California law had made it much

ARROYO V. ROSAS 5

more difficult to file Unruh Act claims in state court and that

these changes had led to a wholesale shifting of such cases

to the federal courts, where they now made up nearly a

quarter of the district court’s entire civil docket. Retaining

jurisdiction over the Unruh Act claim here, the court

concluded, would allow Arroyo to evade these California

requirements, contrary to the interest in federal-state comity.

Accordingly, the district court dismissed Arroyo’s Unruh

Act claim without prejudice to refiling it in state court.

Arroyo appealed.

We agree with the district court that the extraordinary

situation created by the unique confluence of California rules

involved here, which has led to systemic changes in where

such cases are filed, presents “exceptional circumstances”

that authorize consideration, on a case-by-case basis, of

whether the “‘principles of economy, convenience, fairness,

and comity which underlie the pendent jurisdiction

doctrine’” warrant declining supplemental jurisdiction. See

City of Chicago v. International Coll. of Surgeons, 522 U.S.

156, 172–73 (1997) (citation omitted). However, because

the district court effectively completed its adjudication of

this entire case—including the Unruh Act claim, whose

outcome was dictated by the court’s ruling on the ADA

claim—before it considered the question of supplemental

jurisdiction, the interests in judicial economy, convenience,

comity, and fairness at that point all overwhelmingly

favored retaining jurisdiction and entering the foreordained

judgment on the Unruh Act claim. The district court

therefore abused its discretion in declining supplemental

jurisdiction over the Unruh Act claim in this particular case.

Consequently, we reverse and remand.

6 ARROYO V. ROSAS

I

The district court’s decision can only be understood

against the backdrop of recent changes in California law

governing Unruh Act claims. We therefore begin with an

overview of those changes and their impact on the California

statutory scheme, as evidenced by the large increase in

filings in the federal courts, and we then summarize the

procedural history of this case and the district court’s ruling.

A

“[I]n order to address the major areas of discrimination

faced day-to-day by people with disabilities,” Congress

adopted, in the ADA, “a clear and comprehensive national

mandate for the elimination of discrimination against

individuals with disabilities.” 42 U.S.C. § 12101(b). In

particular, § 302(a) of the ADA states that “[n]o individual

shall be discriminated against on the basis of disability in the

full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities,

privileges, advantages, or accommodations of any place of

public accommodation by any person who owns, leases (or

leases to), or operates a place of public accommodation.” Id.

§ 12182(a). Section 308(a) of the ADA provides a private

cause of action to enforce this prohibition, see id.

§ 12188(a), but it limits the available relief to the remedies

set forth in § 204 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, namely,

“preventive relief, including . . . a permanent or temporary

injunction,” id. § 2000a-3(a); see also Chapman v. Pier 1

Imports (U.S.), Inc., 631 F.3d 939, 946 (9th Cir. 2011) (en

ARROYO V. ROSAS 7

banc) (noting that “injunctive relief . . . is the only relief

available to private plaintiffs under the ADA”). 1

California’s Unruh Act likewise generally prohibits the

denial of “the full and equal accommodations, advantages,

facilities, privileges, or services in [any] business

establishment[]” based on “disability” (as well as a number

of other enumerated grounds). CAL. CIV. CODE § 51(b). The

Unruh Act also contains a specific provision stating that “[a]

violation of the right of any individual under the federal

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 . . . shall also

constitute a violation of this section.” Id. § 51(f). As with

the ADA, a “person aggrieved” by a violation of the Unruh

Act may file a civil action seeking “preventive relief,

including . . . a permanent or temporary injunction.” Id.

§ 52(c)(3). However, in contrast to the ADA, the private

civil remedy for Unruh Act violations also allows injured

persons to recover “actual damages,” as well as “any amount

that may be determined by a jury . . . up to a maximum of

three times the amount of actual damage but in no case less

than four thousand dollars.” Id. § 52(a); see also id.

§ 55.56(a); Molski v. M.J. Cable, Inc., 481 F.3d 724, 731

(9th Cir. 2007). Because, as noted, every violation of the

ADA in California is automatically a violation of the Unruh

Act, the net practical consequence is to create a state law

cause of action that permits, for California-based ADA

claims, a damages remedy that is not available under the

ADA.

1

The ADA also allows the Attorney General to bring a civil

enforcement action in certain circumstances, see 42 U.S.C.

§ 12188(b)(1)(B), and in such a suit, the court may award appropriate

“monetary damages to persons aggrieved when requested by the

Attorney General,” id. § 12188(b)(2)(B).

8 ARROYO V. ROSAS

In 2012, the California Legislature enacted new

provisions to address what it perceived to be abuse of the

Unruh Act by “a very small number of plaintiffs’ attorneys.”

Act of Sept. 19, 2012, ch. 383, § 24, 2012 Cal. Stat. 3843,

3871. As the Legislature explained in the uncodified section

of the amending statute that explained its purpose, some

attorneys were abusing the Unruh Act by demanding “quick

money settlement[s]” from California business owners

“without seeking and obtaining actual repair or correction of

the alleged violations on the site.” Id. Such “‘pay me now

or pay me more’ demands” were being “used to scare

businesses into paying quick settlements that only

financially enrich[ed] the attorney and claimant and d[id] not

promote accessibility either for the claimant or the disability

community as a whole.” Id. Accordingly, the Legislature

added a new provision to the California Civil Code that, with

respect to “construction-related accessibility claim[s]” under

the Unruh Act and related state statutes, generally prohibited

up-front requests for money in pre-litigation demand letters

sent by attorneys to business owners. CAL. CIV. CODE

§ 55.31(b). The Legislature also imposed heightened

pleading requirements applicable only to such claims. CAL.

CIV. PROC. CODE § 425.50(a) (2013). Under these special

pleading rules, a complaint must include: (1) an

“explanation of the specific access barrier or barriers the

individual encountered”; (2) the “way in which the barrier

denied the individual full and equal use or access, or [the

way] in which it deterred the individual, on each particular

occasion”; and (3) the “date or dates of each particular

occasion on which the claimant encountered the specific

access barrier, or on which he or she was deterred.” Id.

Finally, “[a]ny complaint alleging a construction-related

accessibility claim” must “be verified by the plaintiff.” Id.

§ 425.50(b).

ARROYO V. ROSAS 9

In 2015, the California Legislature again imposed

additional procedural requirements on “construction-related

accessibility claims” in order to address what it believed was

continued abuse by “high-frequency litigant[s].” CAL. CIV.

PROC. CODE § 425.55(a)(2), (b). In the codified legislative

findings supporting these new requirements, the Legislature

noted that “54 percent[] of all construction-related

accessibility complaints filed between 2012 and 2014 were

filed by two law firms. Forty-six percent of all complaints

were filed by a total of 14 parties.” Id § 425.55(a)(2). These

lawsuits frequently targeted “small businesses on the basis

of boilerplate complaints” to pursue “quick cash settlements

rather than correction of the accessibility violation.” Id.

Under the new pleading requirements, any “construction-

related accessibility claim” (other than one alleging physical

injury or property damage) that is filed by a plaintiff who is

a “high-frequency litigant” must disclose: (1) that the

plaintiff is a high-frequency litigant; (2) how many

complaints the plaintiff has filed in the prior 12 months;

(3) the reason the plaintiff was in “the geographic area of the

defendant’s business”; and (4) why the plaintiff “desired to

access the defendant’s business.” CAL. CIV. PROC. CODE

§ 425.50(a)(4)(A). A “high-frequency litigant” plaintiff was

generally defined as a “plaintiff who has filed 10 or more

complaints alleging a construction-related accessibility

violation within the 12-month period immediately preceding

the filing of the current complaint alleging a construction-

related accessibility violation.” Id. § 425.55(b)(1). In

addition, the Legislature imposed a $1,000 additional filing

fee—over and above the ordinary civil filing fees—for each

new case filed by a plaintiff who is a high-frequency litigant.

CAL. GOV’T CODE § 70616.5.

The extra $1,000 filing fee, of course, only applies to

actions filed in California state court. The parties here

10 ARROYO V. ROSAS

assume that the heightened pleading requirements also do

not apply in federal court, and they have not cited to us any

district court decision that has applied them in federal court.

We will therefore assume, without deciding, that this

additional premise is correct. The resulting differences

between state court and federal court have produced

significant consequences for the filing of ADA-based Unruh

Act claims. Given the substantive overlap between the ADA

and the Unruh Act—as noted earlier, every violation of the

ADA in California is automatically a violation of the Unruh

Act—the significant expense and burden of California’s

newly imposed rules for “construction-related accessibility

claim[s]” can be avoided by pairing the Unruh Act claim

with a parallel federal ADA claim and then filing the suit in

federal court. It is therefore unsurprising that the record

shows that the number of ADA cases filed in the U.S.

District Court for the Central District of California jumped

from 419 (3 percent of all civil actions filed) in 2013 to 2,720

(18 percent of civil cases) in 2018. Indeed, the trend

continued in fiscal year 2019, when the number of ADA

cases in the Central District increased to 3,374 (nearly 22

percent of civil cases). See U.S. Dist. Ct., C.D. Cal., Annual

Report of Caseload Statistics, Fiscal Year 2019 at 8,

available at https://www.cacd.uscourts.gov/sites/default/file

s/CACD_FY2019_Annual_Report.pdf.

B

Plaintiff Raphael Arroyo, Jr. filed the instant action in

the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California

on July 23, 2018. Within the preceding 12 months, he had

filed at least 38 ADA cases, meaning that he would have

been classified as a “high-frequency litigant” had he filed

this case in California state court. CAL. CIV. PROC. CODE

§ 425.55(b)(1). But because he filed this action in federal

ARROYO V. ROSAS 11

court, he avoided the extra $1,000 filing fee and the special

pleading requirements that California law imposes on such

high-frequency litigants.

According to the complaint, Arroyo is “a paraplegic who

cannot walk and who uses a wheelchair for mobility.” He

alleges that, earlier that same month, he visited the Gardena

Main Plaza Liquor store, located in Gardena, California.

During that visit, he encountered several barriers to equal

access that resulted from the store’s failure to comply with

various requirements of the ADA. Specifically, Arroyo

alleged that the store’s handicapped parking space was not

van-accessible and that the store’s transaction counter was

too high. Arroyo also alleged that the store’s aisles were too

narrow and were obstructed by merchandise, although he

stated that he “did not personally confront” these particular

barriers. Based on these allegations, he asserted two causes

of action against Carmen Rosas, the owner of the store: (1) a

claim for injunctive relief under the ADA; and (2) a claim

for monetary damages and injunctive relief for the ADA-

based violations of the Unruh Act. 2

About a year after filing this action, Arroyo moved for

summary judgment. Rosas, who was proceeding pro se,

unsuccessfully sought an extension of time to file her

opposition to Arroyo’s motion, and she thereafter failed to

file any response by the court’s unextended deadline. In

August 2019, the district court granted Arroyo summary

2

Arroyo’s complaint also named as a defendant “A & G Interprises,

LLC,” the entity that allegedly owned the land on which the store sits.

The district court subsequently dismissed A & G from the suit without

prejudice on the grounds that Arroyo had failed to serve process on A &

G and A & G no longer owned the property. Arroyo does not challenge

A & G’s dismissal on appeal.

12 ARROYO V. ROSAS

judgment against Rosas on his ADA claim and declined

jurisdiction over his pendent Unruh Act claim.

The district court held that Arroyo had demonstrated

standing to bring an ADA claim against Rosas inasmuch as

he presented uncontested evidence that he had “visited the

[s]tore in July 2018 and could not access it due to the

parking, transaction counter, and aisle barriers” and that he

intended to visit the store again in the future. Addressing the

merits of Arroyo’s ADA claim, the district court recited the

elements that Arroyo needed to establish, and the court

properly concluded that each was supported by the

uncontested evidence. As a threshold matter, Rosas’s store

is a “place of public accommodation” covered by the Act,

see 42 U.S.C. § 12181(7)(E) (any “sales . . . establishment,”

such as a “grocery store,” that is a “private entit[y]” is

deemed to be a place of “public accommodation[]” if its

“operations . . . affect commerce”), and Rosas is a “person

who owns . . . or operates” that “place of “public

accommodation,” id. § 12182(a). Arroyo’s paraplegia is a

“disability” within the meaning of the ADA, see id. § 12102,

and he would be “discriminated against on the basis of [that]

disability,” id. § 12182(a), if he showed that Rosas “fail[ed]

to remove architectural barriers . . . where such removal is

readily achievable.” Id. § 12182(b)(2)(A)(iv); see also

Chapman, 631 F.3d at 945.

Reviewing the uncontested evidence on this latter issue,

the district court concluded that the barriers that Arroyo

identified in the store, “including the uneven parking access

aisle with high slopes, the 55-inch transaction counter, and

the paths of travel in the [s]tore that measured between

12 and 30 inches, created ‘architectural barriers’” within the

meaning of the ADA, and that “Rosas can readily remove

these types of barriers.” See 28 C.F.R. § 36.304(a) (removal

ARROYO V. ROSAS 13

of barriers is “readily achievable” when it is “easily

accomplishable and able to be carried out without much

difficulty or expense”); id. § 36.304(b) (“[e]xamples of steps

to remove barriers include . . . [r]epositioning shelves” and

[c]reating designated accessible parking spaces”).

Accordingly, the district court granted summary judgment to

Arroyo on his ADA claim, and the court entered judgment

enjoining Rosas “to provide compliant accessible parking,

sales counters, and merchandise aisles” at her store.

Having granted Arroyo summary judgment on his

federal ADA claim, the court nonetheless declined to

exercise supplemental jurisdiction over his state law Unruh

Act claim. The court held that, due to “exceptional

circumstances,” there were “compelling reasons for

declining jurisdiction” under 28 U.S.C. § 1367(c)(4).

Specifically, the court noted that California’s special filing

and pleading requirements for “construction-related

accessibility claims” reflected the state Legislature’s “desire

to limit the financial burdens California’s businesses may

face” from “claims for statutory damages under the Unruh

Act.” The district court concluded that if it were to retain

jurisdiction, it would allow Arroyo to “evade[]” the special

restrictions that California law applied to Unruh Act claims

asserted by “high-frequency litigants” such as him. The

court further noted that, since California’s adoption of these

additional restrictions, the number of such cases filed in the

Central District “has skyrocketed both numerically and as a

percentage of total civil filings.” The district court

concluded that the resulting situation presented

“‘exceptional circumstances’ and ‘compelling reasons’ that

justify exercising the Court’s discretion to decline

supplemental jurisdiction over plaintiff’s Unruh Act claim in

this action under 28 U.S.C. § 1367(c)(4).”

14 ARROYO V. ROSAS

Turning to the discretionary factors identified in United

Mine Workers of America v. Gibbs, 383 U.S. 715 (1966), the

district court acknowledged that “it would be more

convenient and efficient for the ADA claim and the state law

claim based on the same ADA violations to be litigated in

one suit,” but the court concluded that this interest was

outweighed by “considerations of comity” and California’s

“strong interest” in ensuring that litigants seeking monetary

damages for such claims under the Unruh Act did not “claim

these state law damages in a manner inconsistent with the

state law’s requirements.”

Arroyo timely appealed the district court’s judgment

dismissing his Unruh Act claim without prejudice. See FED.

R. APP. P. 4(a)(2). Rosas has not cross-appealed the

judgment on the ADA claim. We have jurisdiction under

28 U.S.C. § 1291.

II

Under the supplemental jurisdiction statute enacted in

1990, a district court that has original jurisdiction over a civil

action “shall have supplemental jurisdiction,” subject to

certain exceptions, “over all other claims that are so related

to claims in the action within such original jurisdiction that

they form part of the same case or controversy under Article

III of the United States Constitution.” 28 U.S.C. § 1367(a).

Because Arroyo’s Unruh Act claim and his ADA claim both

“derive from a common nucleus of operative fact and are

such that a plaintiff would ordinarily be expected to try them

in one judicial proceeding,” they form part of the “same case

or controversy” for purposes of § 1367(a). Trustees of the

Constr. Indus. & Laborers Health & Welfare Tr. v. Desert

Valley Landscape & Maint., Inc., 333 F.3d 923, 925 (9th Cir.

2003) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted).

Accordingly, the district court was required to assert

ARROYO V. ROSAS 15

supplemental jurisdiction under § 1367(a) over Arroyo’s

Unruh Act claim, unless an exception applies under

§ 1367(b), § 1367(c), or another “Federal statute.” See

28 U.S.C. § 1367(a); see also Executive Software N. Am.,

Inc. v. U.S. Dist. Ct., 24 F.3d 1545, 1555–56 (9th Cir. 1994),

overruled on other grounds by California Dep’t of Water

Res. v. Powerex Corp., 533 F.3d 1087 (9th Cir. 2008). 3

Because § 1367(b) limits supplemental jurisdiction only in

cases in which the district court’s original jurisdiction was

“founded solely” on diversity, see 28 U.S.C. § 1367(b), it

does not apply to Arroyo’s suit, in which the district court

had federal question jurisdiction over the ADA claim under

28 U.S.C. § 1331. And given that the parties have not

identified any other relevant federal statute, the district

court’s declination of supplemental jurisdiction can be

justified, if at all, only under § 1367(c). See Executive

Software, 24 F.3d at 1556.

Section 1367(c) permits a district court to “decline to

exercise supplemental jurisdiction over a claim” in four

enumerated circumstances:

(1) the claim raises a novel or complex issue

of State law,

(2) the claim substantially predominates over

the claim or claims over which the district

court has original jurisdiction,

3

As the Supreme Court has noted, § 1367 does not eliminate the

obligation “not to decide state law claims (or to stay their adjudication)

where one of the abstention doctrines articulated by [the] Court applies.”

International Coll. of Surgeons, 522 U.S. at 174. No issue of abstention

has been raised here.

16 ARROYO V. ROSAS

(3) the district court has dismissed all claims

over which it has original jurisdiction, or

(4) in exceptional circumstances, there are

other compelling reasons for declining

jurisdiction.

Id. § 1367(c). The district court invoked the fourth

exception in dismissing Arroyo’s pendent Unruh Act claim,

and we review that decision for abuse of discretion. See

Bryant v. Adventist Health Sys./West, 289 F.3d 1162, 1165

(9th Cir. 2002). 4

A district court’s decision to invoke § 1367(c)(4) entails

a two-part inquiry. First, the district court must “articulate

why the circumstances of the case are exceptional” within

the meaning of § 1367(c)(4). Executive Software, 24 F.3d

at 1558; see also San Pedro Hotel Co. v. City of Los Angeles,

159 F.3d 470, 478 (9th Cir. 1998) (district court must

provide an explanation of its reasons if it invokes

§ 1367(c)(4), but not if it invokes § 1367(c)(1)–(3)).

Second, in determining whether there are “compelling

reasons for declining jurisdiction” in a given case, the court

should consider what “‘best serves the principles of

economy, convenience, fairness, and comity which underlie

the pendent jurisdiction doctrine’” articulated in Gibbs. See

International Coll. of Surgeons, 522 U.S. at 172–73 (citation

4

On appeal, Rosas contends that we can alternatively uphold the

dismissal of the Unruh Act claim under § 1367(c)(1) and § 1367(c)(2),

but we disagree. As an initial matter, we cannot uphold the district

court’s decision based on discretionary grounds it did not invoke. See

Executive Software, 24 F.3d at 1561. But in any event, as our subsequent

analysis will make clear, the outcome of the Unruh Act claim in this case

is obvious in light of the district court’s ADA ruling, and that fact vitiates

any ground for invoking those other subsections.

ARROYO V. ROSAS 17

omitted); see also Acri v. Varian Assocs., Inc., 114 F.3d 999,

1001 (9th Cir. 1997) (en banc) (referring to these

considerations as the “Gibbs values”). These two inquiries

are “not particularly burdensome.” Executive Software,

24 F.3d at 1558. “A court simply must articulate why the

circumstances of the case are exceptional in addition to

inquiring whether the balance of the Gibbs values provide[s]

compelling reasons for declining jurisdiction in such

circumstances.” Id. We separately address these two

inquiries.

A

The district court’s principal justification for declining

supplemental jurisdiction was that the distinctive

configuration of California-law rules—which pair a

damages remedy with special procedural requirements

aimed at limiting suits by high-frequency litigants—would

be rendered ineffectual if the district court were to exercise

supplemental jurisdiction. We hold that the district court did

not abuse its discretion in concluding that, for this reason,

this case presents “exceptional circumstances” within the

meaning of § 1367(c)(4).

Our caselaw offers little guidance as to what might

constitute the sort of “exceptional circumstances” that would

permit an exercise of case-specific discretion to decline

supplemental jurisdiction under § 1367(c)(4). In Executive

Software, we emphasized that the circumstances should be

“quite unusual” and should not rest “solely” on routinely

occurring conditions such as “docket congestion.” 24 F.3d

at 1558, 1560 n.15; cf. Thermtron Prods., Inc. v.

Hermansdorfer, 423 U.S. 336, 344 (1976) (holding that

otherwise properly removed diversity case could not be

remanded simply because the court had a “heavy docket”;

“the right to remove has never been dependent on the state

18 ARROYO V. ROSAS

of the federal court’s docket”). Without purporting to limit

the variety of other circumstances that might be deemed

sufficiently “exceptional” to warrant consideration of

declining supplemental jurisdiction, see, e.g., Voda v. Cordis

Corp., 476 F.3d 887, 900 (Fed. Cir. 2007) (holding that

potential impact of retaining supplemental jurisdiction on

U.S. treaty obligations was an “exceptional circumstance”

under § 1367(c)(4)), we think that, at the very least, that

phrase extends to highly unusual situations that threaten to

have a substantial adverse impact on the core Gibbs values

of “‘economy, convenience, fairness, and comity.’”

International Coll. of Surgeons, 522 U.S. at 172–73 (citation

omitted). That is the case here.

As the district court recognized, the recent confluence of

several California-law rules have combined to create a

highly unusual systemic impact on ADA-based Unruh Act

cases that clearly threatens to have a significant adverse

impact on federal-state comity. Congress crafted the ADA

so that the only remedy available in private suits is

prospective injunctive relief, and damages are only available

in suits that the Government elects to bring. See supra at 6–

7 & n.1. As it is entitled to do, California chose a different

route—it created, in the Unruh Act, a state law cause of

action that relies dispositively on the ADA’s substantive

rules but that expands the remedies available in a private

action. Not only are “actual damages” available, but also an

additional award of up to treble damages, and the total

monetary award may not be less than $4,000 per occasion.

See CAL. CIV. CODE § 52(a); id. § 55.56(a), (f). In response

to the resulting substantial volume of claims asserted under

the Unruh Act, and the concern that high-frequency litigants

may be using the statute to obtain monetary relief for

themselves without accompanying adjustments to locations

to assure accessibility to others, California chose not to

ARROYO V. ROSAS 19

reform the underlying cause of action but instead to impose

filing restrictions designed to address that concern. Because

these procedural restrictions apparently have not been

applied in federal court, see supra at 9–10, the consequence

of these various laws, taken together, was to make it very

unattractive to file such Unruh Act suits in state court but

very attractive to file them in federal court. Given that the

Unruh Act borrows the ADA’s substantive standards as the

predicate for its cause of action, a federal forum is readily

available simply by pairing the Unruh Act claim with a

companion ADA claim for injunctive relief. See 28 U.S.C.

§ 1331. As the statistics cited by the district court

demonstrate, 5 the apparent result has been a wholesale

shifting of Unruh Act/ADA cases into the U.S. District Court

for the Central District of California (and perhaps the other

California federal courts as well).

Arroyo quibbles with the precise statistics cited by the

district court, but he has provided no basis to doubt the

overall pattern they reveal and, indeed, he does not dispute

that “a steadily increasing number of ADA/Unruh cases [are]

being filed in federal court.” He contends, however, that the

district court’s inference that the cases were filed in federal

5

“According to statistics compiled by the Clerk’s Office, in 2013,

the first year in which California’s initial limitations on [Unruh Act

construction-related accessibility claims] were in effect, there were

419 ADA cases filed in the Central District, constituting 3 percent of the

civil actions filed. Filings of ADA cases increased from 928 (7 percent

of civil cases) in 2014, the year before the imposition of the extra $1,000

filing fee and additional pleading requirements for high-frequency

litigants, to 1,386 (10 percent of civil cases) in 2016, the first full year of

those requirements. The number and percentage of such cases filed in

the Central District have increased each year since California enacted the

limitations on high-frequency litigants, reaching 1,670 (12 percent of

civil cases) in 2017, 2,720 (18 percent of civil cases) in 2018, and 1,868

cases (24 percent of civil cases) in the first six months of 2019.”

20 ARROYO V. ROSAS

court to avoid the state’s special requirements is

unwarranted, because the record contains no statistics

showing whether there is a “correlated decrease in

ADA/Unruh filings in state court.” Even without that data,

we think that the district court had an ample basis to

reasonably infer that the post-2015 surge in ADA filings in

the Central District was caused by California’s 2015

adoption of new procedural requirements that placed

substantial burdens on filing such cases in state court. 6

The district court properly observed that, due to the shift

of ADA-based Unruh Act cases to federal court, California’s

unique configuration of laws in this area did not accomplish

the Legislature’s goal of simultaneously providing damages

relief for ADA violations while “limit[ing] the financial

burdens California’s businesses may face for claims for

statutory damages under the Unruh Act.” Instead, as the

district court explained, Unruh Act plaintiffs have “evaded

6

Although it is not necessary to rely on it, we note that the available

data from the California Commission on Disability Access confirms the

dramatic shift of disability-related cases from state to federal court.

Under California Civil Code § 55.32(b)(1), California attorneys must

serve the Commission with a copy of any complaint filed in any court

(state or federal) asserting a construction-related accessibility claim. In

its most recent report to the Legislature, the Commission stated that,

since 2015, it “has observed a steady decrease in the number of state

complaints received and significant increases in the number of federal

complaints received.” See Cal. Comm’n on Disability Access, 2019

Annual Report to the Legislature, Appendix A, available at

https://www.dgs.ca.gov/Resources/Legislative-Reports. Indeed, the

Commission’s data show that in 2015, more state complaints were

received than federal complaints (1,240 state complaints versus 1,083

federal complaints), but by 2019, the number of state complaints had

dropped so dramatically that the ratio of federal to state complaints was

now more than 10:1 (311 state complaints versus 3,211 federal

complaints). Id.

ARROYO V. ROSAS 21

these limits” by filing in a federal “forum in which [they] can

claim these state law damages in a manner inconsistent with

the state law’s requirements.” In short, the procedural

strictures that California put in place have been rendered

largely toothless, because they can now be readily evaded.

These circumstances are “exceptional” in any

meaningful sense of the term. See Exceptional, WEBSTER’S

THIRD NEW INT’L DICTIONARY 791 (1981) (“being out of the

ordinary: uncommon, rare”). And failing to recognize them

as exceptional would improperly ignore the very substantial

threat to federal-state comity that this overall situation

presents. Comity principles counsel against, for example,

“step[ping] on the toes of the state courts” by imposing

gratuitous and unnecessary burdens on them. See Sullivan

v. Conway, 157 F.3d 1092, 1095 (7th Cir. 1998) (holding

that district court properly retained jurisdiction over pendent

state claims rather than “prolonging this doomed litigation

by sending it back to the state court to be dismissed there”).

Here, we are presented with a converse comity concern—

namely, that retention of supplemental jurisdiction over

ADA-based Unruh Act claims threatens to substantially

thwart California’s carefully crafted reforms in this area and

to deprive the state courts of their critical role in effectuating

the policies underlying those reforms. As noted earlier, the

California Legislature recognized that its creation of a

damages remedy for “construction-related accessibility

claims” had imposed significant burdens on small businesses

and created potential incentives for plaintiffs and their

counsel to seek monetary settlements at the expense of

forward-looking relief that might benefit the general public.

See supra at 7–9. The Legislature could have chosen to

eliminate the damages remedy in whole or in part, but it

instead imposed a set of special procedural limitations

designed to balance its objectives of allowing monetary

22 ARROYO V. ROSAS

relief, avoiding undue burdens on businesses, and realigning

undesirable incentives for plaintiffs. But as the district court

recognized, the ready shifting of ADA-based Unruh Act

cases to federal court has created “an ‘end-[run] around’

California’s requirements,” thereby allowing a wholesale

evasion of those critical limitations on damages relief under

the Unruh Act. The district court did not abuse its discretion

in concluding that this extraordinary situation threatens

unusually significant damage to federal-state comity and

presents “exceptional circumstances” within the meaning of

§ 1367(c)(4).

Arroyo argues that it was “wholly improper” for the

district court to decline supplemental jurisdiction based on

the asserted desire to ease docket congestion. Although the

district court did note the “burden the ever-increasing

number of such cases poses to the federal courts,” we do not

read its decision as resting on an improper desire to avoid

docket burdens. Rather, the district court rested its decision

squarely on the comity-based concerns that California’s

policy objectives in this area were being wholly thwarted

and its courts were being deprived of their crucial role in

carrying out the Legislature’s reforms of the Unruh Act. The

mechanism by which that frustration of California’s goals

occurred was the wholesale shifting of cases from state to

federal court, and the district court therefore can hardly be

faulted for noting the federal-court burdens that resulted as a

collateral consequence. But that does not vitiate the district

court’s proper reliance on the exceptional comity-based

concerns presented here. Nothing in the district court’s order

supports the view that the court relied on an impermissible

ARROYO V. ROSAS 23

purpose to remand state law claims “solely to ease docket

congestion.” Executive Software, 24 F.3d at 1560 n.15. 7

In light of the foregoing, we have little difficulty

concluding that the district court did not abuse its discretion

in concluding that the situation presented here involves

“exceptional circumstances” within the meaning of

§ 1367(c)(4).

B

Given that exceptional circumstances were presented,

the remaining question is whether the district court abused

its discretion in making a case-specific judgment that there

are “compelling reasons” for declining supplemental

jurisdiction in this case. As noted earlier, that question

requires a consideration of the so-called “Gibbs values,”

Acri, 114 F.3d at 1001, namely, “judicial economy,

convenience[,] . . . fairness to litigants,” and “comity.”

Gibbs, 383 U.S. at 726. Given the very late stage at which

the district court declined supplemental jurisdiction in this

case, these values overwhelmingly favored retaining

jurisdiction over Arroyo’s Unruh Act claim, and the district

court therefore abused its discretion in dismissing that claim.

7

The other cases cited by Arroyo are inapposite. Thermtron did not

involve discretionary supplemental jurisdiction at all; instead, the Court

there merely held that mandatory diversity jurisdiction over a case may

not be declined simply “because the district court considers itself to busy

to try it.” 423 U.S. at 344. Northern Cheyenne Tribe v. Adsit, 668 F.2d

1080, 1088 (9th Cir. 1982), likewise did not address supplemental

jurisdiction, but rather abstention under Colorado River Conservation

District v. United States, 424 U.S. 800 (1976).

24 ARROYO V. ROSAS

1

From the perspective of judicial economy and

convenience, it makes no sense to decline jurisdiction, as the

district court did, over a pendent state law claim that that

court has effectively already decided. Under the plain

language of California Civil Code § 51(f), a violation of the

ADA is automatically, without more, a violation of the

Unruh Act. See supra at 7. Accordingly, the district court’s

ADA ruling already established that Rosas has violated the

Unruh Act, and it identified the specific respects in which

she did so.

As to remedy, Arroyo requested the appropriate statutory

minimum damages award under the Unruh Act. Such

damages are available under that Act if the plaintiff

“personally encountered the violation on a particular

occasion” or if he or she was deterred “from accessing a

place of public accommodation that the plaintiff intended to

use on a particular occasion.” See CAL. CIV. CODE

§ 55.56(a), (b), (d)(1). “A violation personally encountered

by a plaintiff may be sufficient to cause a denial of full and

equal access if the plaintiff experienced difficulty,

discomfort, or embarrassment because of the violation.” See

id. § 55.56(c); see also Mundy v. Pro-Thro Enters., 121 Cal.

Rptr. 3d 274, 278 (Cal. App. Dep’t Super. Ct. 2011) (trial

court properly denied statutory damages where plaintiff

offered no evidence “showing that the violation caused him

difficulty, discomfort, or embarrassment”). Given Rosas’s

failure to oppose Arroyo’s summary judgment motion, the

material facts that Arroyo “adequately supported” in

establishing his claims for relief may be taken as “admitted

to exist without controversy,” and his damages award on

summary judgment would be calculated accordingly. See

C.D. CAL. LOCAL CIV. R. 56-3. Here, the district court’s

ARROYO V. ROSAS 25

findings in its summary judgment order establish, without

more, that Arroyo is entitled to a $4,000 award based on his

actual encounter with the store’s barriers during his visit in

July 2018, which caused him the requisite injury. To obtain

the minimum statutory award of $4,000, Arroyo did not need

to quantify the damages associated with his undisputed

showing, at summary judgment, that he had suffered, as he

put it, “difficulty, discomfort[,] inconvenience,

embarrassment, anxiety and frustration.” See Molski,

481 F.3d at 731 (“The litigant need not prove she suffered

actual damages to recover the independent statutory

damages of $4,000.”).

The only remaining question is whether Arroyo is

entitled to a second award of statutory damages based on his

claim that he was also deterred from visiting the store in the

future. This issue was not resolved by the district court’s

findings. The district court concluded, in its standing

analysis, that “the barriers deter [Arroyo] from patronizing”

the store, which Arroyo “intends” to visit “in the future.”

However, in reaching this conclusion, the court did not

address whether Arroyo had shown that he “intended to use

[the store] on a particular occasion” and “was deterred from

accessing” it “on [that] particular occasion.” See CAL. CIV.

CODE § 55.56(d)(1) (emphasis added). Nonetheless, this

sole remaining issue presents little difficulty. Arroyo’s

declaration in support of his summary judgment motion

manifestly made no showing as to this particularity

requirement, because it merely asserted that, if the barriers

“are removed, [he] plan[s] to visit the [s]tore on a regular

basis or whenever the need arises.” That is enough to

warrant prospective injunctive relief under the ADA, but it

is not enough to show that he was actually deterred on a

“particular” occasion. Accordingly, Arroyo is not entitled to

26 ARROYO V. ROSAS

a second award of statutory damages, and his total Unruh

Act damages are $4,000.

Given that the correct disposition of Arroyo’s Unruh Act

claim follows obviously and ineluctably from the findings

that the district court has already made, it would be a sheer

waste of time and resources to require that claim to be refiled

in state court. See, e.g., Williams Elecs. Games, Inc. v.

Garrity, 479 F.3d 904, 907 (7th Cir. 2007) (stating that

judicial economy favors retaining supplemental jurisdiction

over remaining state claims, even when all federal claims

have been dismissed, if, inter alia, “it is obvious how the

claims should be decided”). The values of judicial economy

and convenience thus weigh very heavily in favor of

retaining jurisdiction and adding, to an amended summary

judgment order, the few simple sentences needed to dispose

of the Unruh Act claim. See Wright v. Associated Ins. Cos.,

29 F.3d 1244, 1251 (7th Cir. 1994) (“If the district court, in

deciding a federal claim, decides an issue dispositive of a

pendent claim, there is no use leaving the latter to the state

court.”); cf. Oliver v. Ralphs Grocery Co., 654 F.3d 903, 911

(9th Cir. 2011) (no abuse of discretion declining

supplemental jurisdiction under § 1367(c)(3) when ADA

claims had been dismissed and state law claims might raise

additional issues). And “federal-state comity is certainly not

served by sending back to state court” litigation in which the

result is wholly foreordained. Groce v. Eli Lilly & Co.,

193 F.3d 496, 502 (7th Cir. 1999).

2

Rosas nonetheless insists that the district court properly

dismissed the Unruh Act claim on comity grounds in order

to prevent evasion of California’s procedural strictures. The

problem is, once again, that the district court waited too late

in the litigation to invoke this interest. If the district court

ARROYO V. ROSAS 27

had declined supplemental jurisdiction over Arroyo’s Unruh

Act claim at the outset of the litigation, it might then still

have been possible to further California’s interest in cabining

Unruh Act damages claims through the imposition of

heightened pleading requirements and a substantial up-front

filing fee. But once the district court granted summary

judgment upholding the merits of Arroyo’s ADA claim (and,

perforce, his Unruh Act claim), it was no longer possible to

satisfy the interests underlying California’s various devices

for pre-screening Unruh Act claims. Having already granted

summary judgment in Arroyo’s favor, the district court by

that point had itself identified the specific “specific access

barrier or barriers the individual encountered,” the “way in

which the barrier denied the individual full and equal use or

access,” and the particular date “on which the claimant

encountered the specific access barrier.” CAL. CODE CIV. P.

§ 425.50(a).

Moreover, when the court granted summary judgment, it

knew that Arroyo was a “high-frequency litigant,” but

nothing meaningful could be done with that information at

that point. To be sure, Arroyo had not been made to disclose

in his complaint the reason why he was in “the geographic

area of the defendant’s business” or why, specifically, he

“desired to access the defendant’s business.” CAL. CIV.

PROC. CODE § 425.50(a)(4)(A)(iii)–(iv). But those subjects

could have been explored in discovery by Rosas, and if they

had led to any grounds for defense, she could have raised

them. There is no point in exploring such questions when

the merits of the claims have already been litigated and

resolved. At this point, the only thing that would be

accomplished by sending the Unruh Act claim to state

court—other than burdening the state court with pointless

make-work—would be to dun Arroyo for the $1,000 special

filing fee for high-frequency litigants as well as the other

28 ARROYO V. ROSAS

standard filing fees. See CAL. GOV’T CODE § 70616.5. In

the present circumstances, that would amount to little more

than a gratuitous tax on the award to which Arroyo has

already established he is entitled. 8

Finally, there is no sense in which the district court’s

dismissal can be said to further the interest in ensuring that

the federal courts not be burdened with combined

ADA/Unruh Act cases that would not have survived

California’s up-front screening mechanisms. Any burden

from this particular litigation has already been borne, and all

that remains is the relatively ministerial task of entering

judgment on the foreordained Unruh Act claim. As noted

earlier, we are sympathetic to the district court’s desire to

address the unique burdens that flow from the extraordinary

confluence of California rules concerning Unruh Act claims.

But it is simply too late to undo the now-sunk costs already

incurred by litigating this matter to its now-inevitable

conclusion.

Considering all of the Gibbs values, we hold that the

district court abused its discretion in declining supplemental

jurisdiction over Arroyo’s Unruh Act claim under

§ 1367(c)(4).

8

We attach no weight to Arroyo’s subjective motivation for

preferring a federal forum over a state forum. Cf. Wheeler v. City &

County of Denver, 229 U.S. 342, 351 (1913) (“[T]he cases are numerous

in which it has been decided that the motives of litigants in seeking

Federal jurisdiction are immaterial.”). The weighing of the Gibbs values

is not an effort to ascertain whether the parties are operating with

admirable subjective motives in the case at hand. Rather, the focus is on

whether the consequences of either retaining or declining supplemental

jurisdiction in a given case will promote the values of “‘economy,

convenience, fairness, and comity.’” Executive Software, 24 F.3d

at 1554 (citation omitted).

ARROYO V. ROSAS 29

III

We reverse the district court’s dismissal of Arroyo’s

Unruh Act claim and remand for further proceedings

consistent with this opinion.

REVERSED and REMANDED.