Injured on the Job: Standing, Federalism, and State Wage-and-Hour Laws

In TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, the Supreme Court reinterpreted standing's injuryin-fact requirement to preclude jurisdiction in cases where a plaintiff alleges a statutory violation divorced from a traditionally recognized concrete harm. Scholars and courts have spilled endless ink examining how these standing developments either enforce or undermine the separation of powers. Yet, few have scrutinized how recent changes in standing doctrine implicate federalism when federal courts sit in diversity. Through the prism of state wage-and-hour laws, this Note explicates how a stringent reading of standing's requirements imperils key federalism values. It finds that federal courts in New York have used a strict interpretation of TransUnion's concrete-injury requirement to prevent workers from bringing certain state wage-and-hour claims in federal court. This version of standing robs state legislatures of their policymaking power, creating undesirable practical and normative outcomes. In contrast, California federal courts have adopted a more permissive stance that gives state legislatures their due and preserves workers' ability to access a federal forum to vindicate their state-law rights. This dichotomy highlights the divergent approaches federal courts may take when assessing standing in diversity jurisdiction cases in the wake of TransUnion. Given the discretion lower federal courts retain in deciding how to read TransUnion, this Note urges federal courts presiding over state wage-and-hour cases in other jurisdictions-as well as those hearing state-law claims generally-to follow the California approach and apply the concrete-injury requirement permissively.