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SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________
No. 12–574
_________________
ANTHONY WALDEN, PETITIONER v. GINA FIORE
et al.
on writ of certiorari to the united states
court of appeals for the ninth circuit
[February 25, 2014]
Justice Thomas
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case asks us to
decide whether a court in Nevada may exercise personal jurisdiction
over a defendant on the basis that he knew his allegedly tortious
conduct in Georgia would delay the return of funds to plaintiffs
with connections to Nevada. Because the defendant had no other
contacts with Nevada, and because a plaintiff’s con-tacts
with the forum State cannot be “decisive in determining
whether the defendant’s due process rights are
violated,” Rush v. Savchuk, 444 U. S. 320, 332 (1980) ,
we hold that the court in Nevada may not exercise personal
jurisdiction under these circumstances.
I
Petitioner Anthony
Walden serves as a police officer for the city of Covington,
Georgia. In August 2006, petitioner was working at the Atlanta
Hartsfield-Jackson Airport as a deputized agent of the Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA). As part of a task force,
petitioner conducted investigative stops and other law enforcement
functions in support of the DEA’s airport drug interdiction
program.
On August 8, 2006,
Transportation Security Administration agents searched respondents
Gina Fiore and Keith Gipson and their carry-on bags at the San Juan
airport in Puerto Rico. They found almost $97,000 in cash. Fiore
explained to DEA agents in San Juan that she and Gipson had been
gambling at a casino known as the El San Juan, and that they had
residences in both California and Nevada (though they provided only
California identification). After respondents were cleared for
departure, a law enforcement official at the San Juan airport
notified petitioner’s task force in Atlanta that respondents
had boarded a plane for Atlanta, where they planned to catch a
connecting flight to Las Vegas, Nevada.
When respondents
arrived in Atlanta, petitioner and another DEA agent approached
them at the departure gate for their flight to Las Vegas. In
response to petitioner’s questioning, Fiore explained that
she and Gipson were professional gamblers. Respondents maintained
that the cash they were carrying was their gambling
“ ‘bank’ ” and winnings. App. 15,
24. After using a drug-sniffing dog to perform a sniff test,
petitioner seized the cash.[
1]
Petitioner advised respondents that their funds would be returned
if they later proved a legitimate source for the cash. Respondents
then boarded their plane.
After respondents
departed, petitioner moved the cash to a secure location and the
matter was forwarded to DEA headquarters. The next day, petitioner
received a phone call from respondents’ attorney in Nevada
seeking return of the funds. On two occasions over the next month,
petitioner also received documentation from the attorney regarding
the legitimacy of the funds.
At some point after
petitioner seized the cash, he helped draft an affidavit to show
probable cause for forfeiture of the funds and forwarded that
affidavit to a United States Attorney’s Office in
Georgia.[
2] According to
respondents, the affidavit was false and misleading because
petitioner misrepresented the encounter at the airport and omitted
exculpatory information regarding the lack of drug evidence and the
legitimate source of the funds. In the end, no forfeiture complaint
was filed, and the DEA returned the funds to respondents in March
2007.
Respondents filed suit
against petitioner in the United States District Court for the
District of Nevada, seeking money damages under Bivens v. Six
Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents, 403 U. S. 388 (1971) .
Respondents alleged that petitioner violated their Fourth Amendment
rights by (1) seizing the cash without probable cause; (2) keeping
the money after concluding it did not come from drug-related
activity; (3) drafting and forwarding a probable cause affidavit to
support a forfeiture action while knowing the affidavit contained
false statements; (4) willfully seeking forfeiture while
withholding exculpatory informa-tion; and (5) withholding that
exculpatory information from the United States Attorney’s
Office.
The District Court
granted petitioner’s motion to dismiss. Relying on this
Court’s decision in Calder v. Jones, 465 U. S. 783
(1984) , the court determined that petitioner’s search of
respondents and his seizure of the cash in Georgia did not
establish a basis to exercise personal jurisdiction in Nevada. The
court concluded that even if petitioner caused harm to respondents
in Nevada while knowing they lived in Nevada, that fact alone did
not confer jurisdiction. Because the court dismissed the complaint
for lack of personal jurisdiction, it did not determine whether
venue was proper.
On appeal, a divided
panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
reversed. The Court of Appeals assumed the District Court had
correctly determined that petitioner’s search and seizure in
Georgia could not support exercise of jurisdiction in Nevada. The
court held, however, that the District Court could properly
exercise jurisdiction over “the false probable cause
affidavit aspect of the case.” 688 F. 3d 558, 577
(2011). According to the Court of Appeals, petitioner
“expressly aimed” his submission of the allegedly false
affidavit at Nevada by submitting the affidavit with knowledge that
it would affect persons with a “significant connection”
to Nevada.[
3] Id., at 581.
After determining that the delay in returning the funds to
respondents caused them “foreseeable harm” in Nevada
and that the exercise of personal jurisdiction over petitioner was
otherwise reasonable, the court found the District Court’s
exercise of personal jurisdiction to be proper.[
4] Id., at 582, 585. The Ninth Circuit denied
rehearing en banc, with eight judges, in two separate opinions,
dissenting. Id., at 562, 568.
We granted certiorari
to decide whether due process permits a Nevada court to exercise
jurisdiction over petitioner. 568 U. S. ___ (2013). We hold
that it does not and therefore reverse.[
5]
II
A
“Federal courts
ordinarily follow state law in determining the bounds of their
jurisdiction over persons.” Daimler AG v. Bauman, 571
U. S. ___, ___ (2014) (slip op., at 6). This is because a
federal district court’s authority to assert personal
jurisdiction in most cases is linked to service of process on a
defendant “who is subject to the jurisdiction of a court of
general jurisdiction in the state where the district court is
located.” Fed. Rule of Civ. Proc. 4(k)(1)(A). Here, Nevada
has authorized its courts to exercise jurisdiction over persons
“on any basis not inconsistent with . . . the
Constitution of the United States.” Nev. Rev. Stat.
§14.065 (2011). Thus, in order to determine whetherthe Federal
District Court in this case was authorized to exercise jurisdiction
over petitioner, we ask whether the exercise of jurisdiction
“comports with the limits imposed by federal due
process” on the State of Nevada. Daimler, supra, at ___ (slip
op., at 6).
B
1
The Due Process
Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment constrains a State’s
authority to bind a nonresidentdefendant to a judgment of its
courts. World-Wide Volkswagen Corp. v. Woodson, 444 U. S. 286,
291 (1980) . Although a nonresident’s physical presence
within the territorial jurisdiction of the court is not required,
the nonresident generally must have “certain minimum contacts
. . . such that the maintenance of the suit does not
offend ‘traditional notions of fair play and substantial
justice.’ ” International Shoe Co. v. Washington,
326 U. S. 310, 316 (1945) (quoting Milliken v. Meyer, 311
U. S. 457, 463 (1940) ).
This case addresses the
“minimum contacts” necessary to create specific
jurisdiction.[
6] The inquiry
whether a forum State may assert specific jurisdiction over a
nonresident defendant “focuses on ‘the relationship
among the defendant, the forum, and the
litigation.’ ” Keeton v. Hustler Magazine, Inc.,
465 U. S. 770, 775 (1984) (quoting Shaffer v. Heitner, 433
U. S. 186, 204 (1977) ). For a State to exercise jurisdiction
consistent with due process, the defendant’s suit-related
conduct must create a substantial connection with the forum State.
Two related aspects of this necessary relationship are relevant in
this case.
First, the relationship
must arise out of contacts that the “defendant himself”
creates with the forum State. Burger King Corp. v. Rudzewicz, 471
U. S. 462, 475 (1985) . Due process limits on the
State’s adjudicative authority principally protect the
liberty of the nonresident defendant—not the convenience of
plaintiffs or third parties. See World-Wide Volkswagen Corp.,
supra, at 291–292. We have consistently rejected attempts to
satisfy the defendant-focused “minimum contacts”
inquiry by demonstrating contacts between the plaintiff (or third
parties) and the forum State. See Helicopteros Nacionales de
Colombia, S. A. v. Hall, 466 U. S. 408, 417 (1984)
(“[The] unilateral activity of another party or a third
person is not an appropriate consideration when determining whether
a defendant has sufficient contacts with a forum State to justify
an assertion of jurisdiction”). We have thus rejected a
plaintiff’s argument that a Florida court could exercise
per-sonal jurisdiction over a trustee in Delaware based solely on
the contacts of the trust’s settlor, who was domiciled in
Florida and had executed powers of appointment there. Hanson v.
Denckla, 357 U. S. 235 –254 (1958). We have likewise
held that Oklahoma courts could not exercise personal jurisdiction
over an automobile distributor that supplies New York, New Jersey,
and Connecticut dealers based only on an automobile
purchaser’s act of driving it on Oklahoma highways.
World-Wide Volks-wagen Corp., supra, at 298. Put simply, however
sig-nificant the plaintiff’s contacts with the forum may be,
those contacts cannot be “decisive in determining whether the
defendant’s due process rights are violated.” Rush, 444
U. S., at 332.
Second, our
“minimum contacts” analysis looks to the
defendant’s contacts with the forum State itself, not the
defendant’s contacts with persons who reside there. See,
e.g., International Shoe, supra, at 319 (Due process “does
not contemplate that a state may make binding a judgment in
personam against an individual . . . with which the state
has no contacts, ties, or relations”); Hanson, supra, at 251
(“However minimal the burden of defending in a foreign
tribunal, a defendant may not be called upon to do so unless he has
had the ‘minimal contacts’ with that State that are a
prerequisite to its exercise of power over him”).
Accordingly, we have upheld the assertion of jurisdiction over
defendants who have purposefully “reach[ed] out beyond”
their State and into another by, for example, entering a
contractual relationship that “envisioned continuing and
wide-reaching contacts” in the forum State, Burger King,
supra, at 479–480, or by circulating magazines to
“deliberately exploi[t]” a market in the forum State,
Keeton, supra, at 781. And although physical presence in the forum
is not a prerequisite to jurisdiction, Burger King, supra, at 476,
physical entry into the State—either by the defendant in
person or through an agent, goods, mail, or some other
means—is certainly a relevant contact. See, e.g., Keeton,
supra, at 773–774.
But the plaintiff
cannot be the only link between the defendant and the forum.
Rather, it is the defendant’s conduct that must form the
necessary connection with the forum State that is the basis for its
jurisdiction over him. See Burger King, supra, at 478 (“If
the question is whether an individual’s contract with an
out-of-state party alone can automatically establish sufficient
minimum contacts in the other party’s home forum, we believe
the answer clearly is that it cannot”); Kulko v. Superior
Court of Cal., City and County of San Francisco, 436 U. S. 84,
93 (1978) (declining to “find personal jurisdiction in a
State . . . merely because [the plaintiff in a child
support action] was residing there”). To be sure, a
defendant’s contacts with the forum State may be intertwined
with his transactions or interactions with the plaintiff or other
parties. But a defendant’s relationship with a plaintiff or
third party, standing alone, is an insufficient basis for
jurisdiction. See Rush, supra, at 332 (“Naturally, the
parties’ relationships with each other may be significant in
evaluating their ties to the forum. The requirements of
International Shoe, however, must be met as to each defendant over
whom a state court exercises jurisdiction”). Due process
requires that a defendant be haled into court in a forum State
based on his own affiliation with the State, not based on the
“random, fortuitous, or attenuated” contacts he makes
by interacting with other persons affiliated with the State. Burger
King, 471 U. S., at 475 (internal quotation marks
omitted).
2
These same principles
apply when intentional torts are involved. In that context, it is
likewise insufficient to rely on a defendant’s “random,
fortuitous, or attenuated contacts” or on the
“unilateral activity” of a plaintiff. Ibid. (same). A
forum State’s exercise of jurisdiction over an out-of-state
intentional tortfeasor must be based on intentional conduct by the
defendant that creates the necessary contacts with the forum.
Calder v. Jones, 465
U. S. 783 , illustrates the application of these principles.
In Calder, a California actress brought a libel suit in California
state court against a reporter and an editor, both of whom worked
for the National Enquirer at its headquarters in Florida. The
plaintiff’s libel claims were based on an article written and
edited by the defendants in Florida for publication in the National
Enquirer, a national weekly newspaper with a California circulation
of roughly 600,000.
We held that
California’s assertion of jurisdiction over the defendants
was consistent with due process. Although we recognized that the
defendants’ activities “focus[ed]” on the
plaintiff, our jurisdictional inquiry “focuse[d] on
‘the relationship among the defendant, the forum, and the
litigation.’ ” Id., at 788 (quoting Shaffer, 433
U. S., at 204). Specifically, we examined the various contacts
the defendants had created with California (and not just with the
plaintiff) by writing the allegedly libelous story.
We found those forum
contacts to be ample: The defendants relied on phone calls to
“California sources” for the information in their
article; they wrote the story about the plaintiff’s
activities in California; they caused reputa-tional injury in
California by writing an allegedly libelous article that was widely
circulated in the State; and the “brunt” of that injury
was suffered by the plaintiff in that State. 465 U. S., at
788–789. “In sum, California [wa]s the focal point both
of the story and of the harm suffered.” Id., at 789.
Jurisdiction over the defendants was “therefore proper in
California based on the ‘effects’ of their Florida
conduct in California.” Ibid.
The crux of Calder was
that the reputation-based “effects” of the alleged
libel connected the defendants to California, not just to the
plaintiff. The strength of that connection was largely a function
of the nature of the libel tort. However scandalous a newspaper
article might be, it can lead to a loss of reputation only if
communicated to (and read and understood by) third persons. See
Restatement (Second) of Torts §577, Comment b (1976); see also
ibid. (“[R]eputation is the estimation in which one’s
character is held by his neighbors or associates”).
Accordingly, the reputational injury caused by the
defendants’ story would not have occurred but for the fact
that the defendants wrote an article for publication in California
that was read by a large number of California citizens. Indeed,
because publication to third persons is a necessary element of
libel, see id., §558, the defendants’ intentional tort
actually occurred in California. Keeton, 465 U. S., at 777
(“The tort of libel is generally held to occur wherever the
offending material is circulated”). In this way, the
“effects” caused by the defendants’
article—i.e., the injury to the plaintiff’s reputation
in the estimation of the California public—connected the
defendants’ conduct to California, not just to a plaintiff
who lived there. That connection, combined with the various facts
that gave the article a California focus, sufficed to authorize the
California court’s exercise of jurisdiction.[
7]
III
Applying the
foregoing principles, we conclude that petitioner lacks the
“minimal contacts” with Nevada that are a prerequisite
to the exercise of jurisdiction over him. Hanson, 357 U. S.,
at 251. It is undisputed that no part of petitioner’s course
of conduct occurred in Nevada. Petitioner approached, questioned,
and searched respondents, and seized the cash at issue, in the
Atlanta airport. It is alleged that petitioner later helped draft a
“false probable cause affidavit” in Georgia and
forwarded that affidavit to a United States Attorney’s Office
in Georgia to support a potential action for forfeiture of the
seized funds. 688 F. 3d, at 563. Petitioner never traveled to,
conducted activities within, contacted anyone in, or sent anything
or anyone to Nevada. In short, when viewed through the proper
lens—whether the defendant’s actions connect him to the
forum—petitioner formed no jurisdictionally relevant contacts
with Nevada.
The Court of Appeals
reached a contrary conclusion by shifting the analytical focus from
petitioner’s contacts with the forum to his contacts with
respondents. See Rush, 444 U. S., at 332. Rather than
assessing petitioner’s own contacts with Nevada, the Court of
Appeals looked to petitioner’s knowledge of
respondents’ “strong forum connections.” 688
F. 3d, at 577–579, 581. In the court’s view, that
knowledge, combined with its conclusion that respondents suffered
foreseeable harm in Nevada, satisfied the “minimum
contacts” inquiry.[
8]
Id., at 582.
This approach to the
“minimum contacts” analysis impermissibly allows a
plaintiff’s contacts with the defendant and forum to drive
the jurisdictional analysis. Petitioner’s actions in Georgia
did not create sufficient contacts with Nevada simply because he
allegedly directed his conduct at plaintiffs whom he knew had
Nevada connections. Such reasoning improperly attributes a
plain-tiff’s forum connections to the defendant and makes
those connections “decisive” in the jurisdictional
analysis. See Rush, supra, at 332. It also obscures the reality
that none of petitioner’s challenged conduct had anything to
do with Nevada itself.
Relying on Calder,
respondents emphasize that they suffered the “injury”
caused by petitioner’s allegedly tortious conduct (i.e., the
delayed return of their gambling funds) while they were residing in
the forum. Brief for Respondents 14. This emphasis is likewise
misplaced. As previously noted, Calder made clear that mere injury
to a forum resident is not a sufficient connection to the forum.
Regardless of where a plaintiff lives or works, an injury is
jurisdictionally relevant only insofar as it shows that the
defendant has formed a contact with the forum State. The proper
question is not where the plaintiff experienced a particular injury
or effect but whether the defendant’s conduct connects him to
the forum in a meaningful way.
Respondents’
claimed injury does not evince a connection between petitioner and
Nevada. Even if we consider the continuation of the seizure in
Georgia to be a distinct injury, it is not the sort of effect that
is tethered to Nevada in any meaningful way. Respondents (and only
respondents) lacked access to their funds in Nevada not because
anything independently occurred there, but because Nevada is where
respondents chose to be at a time when they desired to use the
funds seized by petitioner. Respondents would have experienced this
same lack of access in California, Mississippi, or wherever else
they might have traveled and found themselves wanting more money
than they had. Unlike the broad publication of the forum-focused
story in Calder, the effects of petitioner’s con-duct on
respondents are not connected to the forum State in a way that
makes those effects a proper basis forjurisdiction.[
9]
The Court of Appeals
pointed to other possible contacts with Nevada, each ultimately
unavailing. Respondents’ Nevada attorney contacted petitioner
in Georgia, but that is precisely the sort of “unilateral
activity” of a third party that “cannot satisfy the
requirement of contact with the forum State.” Hanson, 357
U. S., at 253. Respondents allege that some of the cash seized
in Georgia “originated” in Nevada, but that attenuated
connection was not created by petitioner, and the cash was in
Georgia, not Nevada, when petitioner seized it. Finally, the funds
were eventually returned to respondents in Nevada, but petitioner
had nothing to do with that return (indeed, it seems likely that it
was respondents’ unilateral decision to have their funds sent
to Nevada).
* * *
Well-established
principles of personal jurisdiction are sufficient to decide this
case. The proper focus of the “minimum contacts”
inquiry in intentional-tort cases is “ ‘the
relationship among the defendant, the forum, and the
litigation.’ ” Calder, 465 U. S., at 788. And
it is the defendant, not the plaintiff or third parties, who must
create contacts with the forum State. In this case, the application
of those principles is clear: Petitioner’s relevant conduct
occurred entirely in Georgia, and the mere fact that his conduct
affected plaintiffs with connectionsto the forum State does not
suffice to authorize jurisdiction. We therefore reverse the
judgment of the Court of Appeals.
It is so ordered.