On March 19, 2013, the United States Supreme Court issued its decision in Standard Fire Ins. Co. v. Knowles, ____ S. Ct. ____, 2013 WL 1104735. Writing for the unanimous Court, Justice Stephen Breyer wrote that a representative of a yet-to-be-certified class, or that putative class’s counsel, cannot avoid removal of a putative class action to Federal Court under the Class Action Fairness Act (“CAFA”) via a precertification stipulation that the damages sought by the class would be less than the CAFA jurisdictional threshold of $5 million.

The Knowles decision is another win in an identifiable trend of recent victories for class action defendants at the Supreme Court. This alert provides a summary of the recent Knowles decision and how it impacts the viability of a long-used “loophole” allowing removal under CAFA, a brief discussion of the trend of recent Supreme Court decisions in favor of class action defendants, and references for further reading.