Friday, October 31, 2025
Page 3
Ninth Circuit:
Jurisdiction Exists Over Lufthansa in Saudi Arabia Dispute
Opinion Says District Court in California May Hear Case Alleging That German Airliner’s Employee Divulged Plaintiffs’ Same Sex-Status to Government of Saudi Arabia Where Homosexuality is Capital Offense, Drawing Dissent
By Kimber Cooley, associate editor
A divided panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held yesterday that specific personal jurisdiction exists in California over a German airline company as to a case alleging that an employee loudly disclosed the plaintiffs’ same-sex marriage at the Riyadh airport, information that they said leaked to the Saudi Arabian government, causing the couple harm and fear of persecution.
Homosexuality is a capital offense in Saudi Arabia.
Saying that the airliner, Deutsche Lufthansa Aktiengesellschaft, had sufficient minimum contacts with California, based largely on the company’s operation of flights to and from the state as well as its agreement to carry the plaintiffs to San Francisco on the day in question, the court opined that the exercise of jurisdiction would not be unreasonable.
One of the plaintiffs is a U.S. citizen who spent time working in Saudi Arabia. The other is a citizen of that country.
Senior Circuit Judge Sidney R. Thomas authored the majority opinion, joined in by Senior Circuit Judge William A. Fletcher. He declared:
“Ultimately, the personal jurisdiction analysis is rooted in concerns about defendants’ due process rights….Given the defendants’ extensive contacts with California, and the connection of those contacts to the suit here, we cannot say that their due process rights would be violated by the exercise of personal jurisdiction.”
Circuit Judge Milan D. Smith dissented, raising concerns that the case implicates issues relating to the Saudi Arabian government’s sovereignty and saying:
“The majority’s approach in this case has wide-reaching implications. 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. This lax view of personal jurisdiction runs counter to the Supreme Court’s admonition that there should be ‘a substantial connection with the forum State’ when exercising personal jurisdiction.”
Complaint Filed
The question arose after two plaintiffs, identified only as “John Doe” and “Robert Roe,” filed a complaint in San Francisco Superior Court in July 2023 against Lufthansa and Lufthansa Group Business Services New York LLC, a subsidiary that provides IT services to the airliner.
They asserted a breach of contract cause of action, based on a privacy policy that promised to securely transmit any information relating to the plaintiffs, and several tort claims, including public disclosure of private facts and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Lufthansa removed the matter to federal court that August.
In the complaint the plaintiffs alleged that they “had their lives upended…as a result of Lufthansa’s actions…following check-in for their May 25, 2021 flight from Riyadh to San Francisco” when an employee “acted recklessly” by “publicly disclos[ing] Doe and Roe’s sexual orientation in the middle of the…airport.” They added:
“Lufthansa knew, or recklessly disregarded, that its public and unauthorized disclosure that Roe (a Saudi Arabian citizen) and Doe (a [U.S.] citizen and California resident working in Saudi Arabia) are gay and married to one another would cause irreparable harm because homosexuality in Saudi Arabia is…a capital offense….Lufthansa’s actions have effectively exiled Roe from his own country, and separated him from his family….”
Roe, now a lawful permanent resident in the U.S., also claimed that, following the flight to San Francisco International Airport (“SFO”), he discovered that his marital status in Saudi Arabia had been changed from “single” to “married,” and asserted that “there is no conceivable way the Saudi Arabian government could have learned about Plaintiffs’ marriage in the U.S. other than as a result of” the May 2021 incident.
On May 29 of last year, Senior District Court Judge Susan Illston of the Northern District of California granted a defense motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction, and judgment was entered against the plaintiffs.
Personal Jurisdiction
Noting that whether specific personal jurisdiction may be exercised in a particular forum depends on the analysis of a three-part “minimum contacts” test, Thomas said that the court must ask whether Lufthansa “purposefully direct[ed]” activities toward, or “avail[e]d” itself of the privilege of doing business in, California and if the claims arise out of or relate to the airliner’s conduct in the state, in addition to weighing fairness and justice concerns.
The jurist pointed out that if either the purposeful direction or availment test “is met…the first prong is satisfied” and opined:
“Here, the purposeful availment test is satisfied because Lufthansa contracted to carry Doe and Roe into California. That contract requires performance in California, the forum state, and thus satisfies the purposeful availment test…Moreover,…Lufthansa regularly operates flights in and out of California, has offices at LAX and SFO, has dozens of employees in California, and has an agent for service of process in California.”
He continued:
“The purposeful direction test is also satisfied in this case because Lufthansa’s conduct extended into California. Although the tortious conduct primarily occurred in Saudi Arabia,….Doe alleges additional injury from the lack of mitigation, which occurred both on the flight to San Francisco and at SFO. The purposeful direction test is therefore also satisfied as this is not the case where Lufthansa had only ‘random, fortuitous, or attenuated contacts’ with the forum.”
Contract for Carriage
Turning to the second prong, the jurist reasoned that “[t]he contract for carriage into California is a forum-related activity” and so “the breach of that contract certainly…satisfies the second prong.” As to the tort claims, he remarked:
“Although the tortious conduct started in Saudi Arabia,…the conduct continued into California: on the flight from Frankfurt to San Francisco, a Lufthansa agent promised Doe that the confidential information had been deleted; once in San Francisco, a Lufthansa agent promised Lufthansa would call Doe and Roe about the incident, but never did.”
Weighing the various fairness concerns associated with the exercise of personal jurisdiction, Thomas acknowledged that “Doe and Roe’s claims are predicated on harm from Saudi Arabia’s anti-gay laws, and their claims would also require discovery into the Saudi government’s surveillance of Lufthansa’s electronic communications,” but he commented that there was no “compelling case” against the exercise of jurisdiction.
Saying that diversity subject matter jurisdiction was met because the plaintiffs alleged “damages over $300,000” and that there were citizens of different states on each side of the case, he said that the fact that “there are there are foreign nationals on both sides of the case—Roe as a plaintiff, Lufthansa as a defendant—does not defeat diversity” because they are “additional parties.”
Smith’s View
Smith said that he agrees with the majority’s conclusion that “we have subject matter jurisdiction” but disagrees with the majority’s personal jurisdiction analysis. He wrote:
“Plaintiffs have not shown that their claims arise out of or relate to Lufthansa’s forum-related conduct. All the relevant activity occurred abroad: Plaintiffs resided in Saudi Arabia, purchased their tickets in Saudi Arabia, and had their confrontation…in Saudi Arabia. In other words, all ‘suit-related conduct’ is connected to Saudi Arabia, not California….That both the conduct and the harm occurred abroad weighs heavily against exercising jurisdiction.”
Pointing out that the contract was formed abroad and that “the alleged breach…occurred in Saudi Arabia,” he argued that “our cases require a greater connection to conduct occurring in the forum to…satisfy[] the ‘arising out of’ requirement.”
The judge added that “[e]ven if Plaintiffs satisfied the second step, the exercise of specific personal jurisdiction is unreasonable at step three,” saying:
“Plaintiffs’ claims require investigation of Saudi Arabia’s purported practice of covert monitoring and marital status tracking, which would create a conflict with Saudi Arabia’s sovereignty. Additionally,…applying California privacy tort law will require the court, at least to some degree, to determine what is considered offensive or outrageous conduct in Saudi Arabia….Where such extensive conflicts with foreign nations’ sovereignty would result, this factor strongly counsels against jurisdiction.”
The case is Doe v. Deutsche Lufthansa Aktiengesellschaft, 24-2829.
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