A federal appeals panel has cleared for takeoff a formerly grounded lawsuit in which a California couple sued Lufthansa, alleging the German airline wrongly revealed their same-sex relationship to Saudi Arabian officials.
U.S. District Judge Susan Illston had dismissed the complaint from the men, identified only as John Doe and Robert Roe, saying they couldn’t sue in California. They challenged that ruling before the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Judge Sidney Thomas wrote the panel’s opinion, filed Oct. 30. Judges William Fletcher and Milan Smith Jr. concurred, though Smith wrote a partial dissent.
According to court records, the couple married in 2013, and have been together for more than 30 years. Since 1989, the couple would spend part of each year living in the Middle Eastern Islamic kingdom where homosexuality is a capital offense. Doe is an American citizen, while Roe is Saudi. They place the origin of their legal dispute in May 2021, when the U.S. lifted a Covid-19 mitigation ban on noncitizens traveling by air from Saudi Arabia, provided they were immediate family members of a citizen.
Roe attempted to use his marital status to abide by those restrictions and enter the U.S. According to court documents, he intentionally chose to fly Lufthansa, believing a German airline would allow him to enter the U.S., but not reveal his sexuality and marital status to the Saudi government in the process. However, at the gate, a Lufthansa manager, who court documents said was believed to be a Pakistani Muslim, loudly revealed the marital status, allegedly allowing others around to hear.
The court documents state a German national manager at the Riyadh airport declined to intervene. Roe ultimately was allowed to board and fly to California. The men claim Lufthansa assured them it deleted all records of their interaction at the airport, but allege Roe’s status in Saudi Arabian government records was changed without his knowledge or consent.
Judge Illston dismissed the complaint in March 2024, noting the “foreign policy overtones” implicated in the case, as the men “claim that the Saudi Arabian government learned of their marital status through covert monitoring of Lufthansa’s emails and/or through the use of an informant system.”
The judge further noted the case would require her to analyze and interpret European Union and German laws to determine if Lufthansa should pay over the claims in the case. She said she was “sympathetic to plaintiffs’ assertion that California is the only practical venue for them to pursue their claims, and the allegations of the complaint, taken as true, are quite problematic,” but nonetheless lacked jurisdiction.
Thomas said the majority reached the opposite conclusion, noting the district court had specific personal jurisdiction over the airline and Lufthansa Group Business Services. A leading factor was contracting to carry the men into California, showing the airline purposely availed itself of the state as a business market, as well as Doe’s allegations of additional injury from failing to mitigate the situation in Riyadh, which he claimed happened both in the air — they allege an airline employee on the leg from Frankfurt to California assured them the confidential information was deleted — and at the San Francisco airport.
The couple’s breach of contract claim stems from and relates to Lufthansa’s business in California, Thomas continued, as do tort claims. Without the airline’s contract to fly into California, the men wouldn’t have had to disclose a marital status or have any interactions with Lufthansa.
Thomas also noted the potential burden on defendants to deal with a California trial is neutral given their office presence in the state. While the extent of conflict with sovereignty weighs in favor of Lufthansa, as does the lack of an available alternative forum and slight concerns about efficiency, California’s interest in adjudicating the dispute tips the other direction as does the importance of the forum to the couple and the concept of “purposeful interjection” because Lufthansa directly sought to do business in California.
The majority reversed Judge Ilston’s dismissal and remanded the case for further proceedings.
In his dissent, Smith said he agreed that federal courts have subject matter jurisdiction but broke on the question of personal jurisdiction.
“The majority’s approach in this case has wide-reaching implications,” Smith wrote. “Now, at least in our circuit, anyone who experiences any issues with a check-in process or other airline interaction anywhere in the world can sue in the intended destination of their flight, even if there is no other connection to that destination.”
Even if assuming Lufthansa’s practices established purposeful business in California, Smith said the majority should’ve concluded personal jurisdiction was inappropriate because the couple’s claim neither arises from nor relates to California. The men lived in Saudi Arabia, and that’s where they bought plane tickets and interacted with the gate agent, and the final destination of the itinerary isn’t a “substantial connection,” he wrote.
“The majority argues that because Lufthansa ‘signed a contract for carriage into California,’ the breach of that contract sufficiently ‘arises out of and relates to’ California,” Smith wrote. “But the parties formed the contract in Germany and Saudi Arabia and the alleged breach of contract occurred in Saudi Arabia, not California. The only connection between the contract and California is that it was a contract for a flight to San Francisco. That California was the destination does not impact the nature of the contract claim at all — plaintiffs’ claims would not differ if the flight were instead to New York, Miami or Chicago. Such an attenuated connection to the forum state is insufficient under our precedent.”
In looking at the seven factors weighed regarding the exercise of specific personal jurisdiction, Smith said few are heavily balanced in one direction. Still, he concluded by noting that without discounting “the difficulties plaintiffs would face in litigating this case abroad, I believe the conflict with Saudi Arabia’s sovereignty over conduct that occurred within Saudi Arabia is compelling enough to render the exercise of jurisdiction unreasonable.“
The couple is represented by Putterman Yu Wang, of San Francisco.
Lufthansa is represented by Condon & Forsyth, of Los Angeles.
