Congress enacted the Class Action Fairness Act to confer federal jurisdiction over large, complex class action cases spanning across states. The law provides for removal of a class action to federal court, even without complete diversity, when the amount in controversy exceeds $5 million and any plaintiff is a citizen of a different state than any defendant. 28 U.S.C. § 1332(d)(2). Certain lawmakers heralded that the law would “take [certain] cases out of state courts, where there has been a record of prejudice to defendants, and take them to the [f]ederal courts where, in the historical tradition of diversity litigation ... there is a better opportunity for an objective determination.” 151 Cong. Rec. S999-02, S1000, 2005 WL 283380 (daily ed. Feb. 7, 2005) (statement of Sen. Specter).

Other lawmakers, however, voiced concerns that CAFA’s expanded federal jurisdiction provisions would result in, for example, all environmental and mass tort cases ending up in federal court. Partially as a result of these concerns, Congress added the “local controversy exception” to CAFA, which allows class actions closely tied to one state to remain in state court. 28 U.S.C. § 1332(d)(4). In fact, the Committee on the Judiciary to which CAFA was referred used “a class action in which local residents seek compensation for property damage resulting from a chemical leak at a manufacturing plant in that community” as the primary demonstrative example to explain the local controversy exception. S. Rep. No. 14, 109th Cong., 1st Sess. 2005, 2005 WL 627977, 2005 U.S.C.C.A.N. 3, 28 (Leg. Hist.). “The purpose of [the local controversy] exception was to allow cases involving environmental torts such as a chemical spill to remain in state court if both the event and the injuries were truly local.”