Jose Antonio Santana Rubio v. Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, LLC

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

CENTRAL DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

JOSE ANTONIO SANTANA RUBIO, Case No. 2:24-cv-08042-SB-AS Plaintiff, v. ORDER GRANTING MOTION TO

REMAND [DKT. NO. 19]

RITZ-CARLTON HOTEL

COMPANY, LLC et al., Defendants.

Defendants The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, L.L.C. and Marriott International Administrative Services, Inc. (the Hotels) removed this employment discrimination case based solely on diversity jurisdiction. Dkt. No. 1. Plaintiff Jose Antonio Santana Rubio moves to remand, arguing that the Court lacks subject-matter jurisdiction because diversity is not complete. Dkt. No. 19. It is undisputed that Plaintiff and the Hotels are diverse but that Plaintiff and Defendant Luis de la Mora Palmas are both California citizens, destroying complete diversity if Palmas’s citizenship is considered. The parties’ sole dispute is whether Palmas—Plaintiff’s supervisor when he worked for the Hotels—has been fraudulently joined to defeat removal. See Grancare, LLC v. Thrower, 889 F.3d 543, 548 (9th Cir. 2018) (“In determining whether there is complete diversity, district courts may disregard the citizenship of a non-diverse defendant…