Walmart Employee Drug Testing Suit Stays Federal

A federal district court shouldn’t have taken it upon itself to send an employee suit over Walmart’s drug testing policies back to state court, the Ninth Circuit said Feb. 1.

Courts can’t decide on their own to remand cases based on defects that aren’t jurisdictional, Judge Milan D. Smith Jr. wrote for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Walmart succeeded in convincing the appeals court that the suit belongs in federal court. Defendants typically prefer to litigate in federal court to avoid inconsistent state-court rulings; plaintiffs may view state courts as better positioned to enforce state law ...