Amendment 14 — Minimum Contact Requirements For Personal Jurisdiction

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Fourteenth Amendment , Section 1:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Since its 1945 decision in International Shoe, the Supreme Court has elaborated on the nature and quality of the minimum contacts that a defendant must have with the forum in order for a court to subject him or her to personal jurisdiction in that forum consistent with due process. When determining whether a defendant has minimum contacts with the forum, the Court has distinguished the types of contacts sufficient for a court’s exercise of “specific” personal jurisdiction over the defendant from those contacts sufficient for its exercise, alternatively, of “general” jurisdiction.

A court’s exercise of specific jurisdiction may be constitutional when the defendant: (1) “purposefully avails itself of the privilege of conducting activities” within the forum state; and (2) the defendant’s contacts with the forum give rise to, or are related to, the plaintiff’s claims.[1](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/minimum-contact-requirements-for-personal-jurisdiction#fn1amd14 " Ford Motor Co. v. Mont. Eighth Jud. Dist. Ct., No. 19-368, slip op. at 5–6 (U.S. March 25, 2021). See also Helicopteros Nacionales de Colom. v. Hall, 466 U.S. 408, 414 n.8 (1984) (citing Arthur T. von Mehren & Donald T. Trautman, Jurisdiction to Adjudicate: A Suggested Analysis, 79 Harv. L. Rev. 1121, 1144–64 (1966)). ") A defendant’s contacts with the forum may “relate” to the plaintiff’s claims even in the absence of a “strict causal relationship” between the contacts and claims.[2](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/minimum-contact-requirements-for-personal-jurisdiction#fn2amd14 " Ford Motor Co., slip op. at 8–9, 18 (concluding that Minnesota and Montana state courts could exercise specific personal jurisdiction over Ford Motor Company in product liability cases stemming from allegedly defective Ford automobiles involved in accidents in the forum states because Ford had “extensively promoted, sold, and serviced” the same vehicle models in the forum states, even if the particular vehicles involved in the accidents were designed, manufactured, and first sold in other states). ") However, when there is “no such connection [between the forum and the particular claims at issue], specific jurisdiction is lacking regardless of the extent of a defendant’s unconnected activities in the State.” [3](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/minimum-contact-requirements-for-personal-jurisdiction#fn3amd14 " Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court, No. 16-466, slip op. at 7 (U.S. June 19, 2017) (concluding that the California Supreme Court erred in employing a “relaxed” approach to personal jurisdiction by holding that a state court could exercise specific jurisdiction over a corporate defendant who was being sued by non-state residents for out-of-state activities solely because the defendant had “extensive forum contacts” unrelated to the claims in question). ")

By contrast, a state court’s exercise of general jurisdiction over a nonresident defendant for any claim—even if all the incidents underlying the claim occurred in a different state—may be constitutional when the defendant’s activities in the forum state are so substantial that it is reasonable to require it to defend a lawsuit that did not arise out of its activities in the forum state and is unrelated to those activities.[4](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/minimum-contact-requirements-for-personal-jurisdiction#fn4amd14 " See Helicopteros, 466 U.S. at 414 n.9 ( “When a State exercises personal jurisdiction over a defendant in a suit not arising out of or related to the defendant’s contacts with the forum, the State has been said to be exercising ‘general jurisdiction’ over the defendant.” ); see also id. at 416 (holding that a Texas court could not exercise general personal jurisdiction over a foreign corporation that did not have a place of business in Texas and had only limited contacts with the state involving in-state purchases and training trips); Perkins v. Benguet Consol. Mining Co., 342 U.S. 437, 438, 415, 445 (1952) (holding that an Ohio court could subject a Philippine mining corporation to personal jurisdiction even though the “cause of action sued upon did not arise in Ohio and d[id] not relate to the corporation’s activities there” because of the corporation’s substantial activities within the state, including “directors’ meetings, business correspondence, banking, stock transfers, payment of salaries, [and] purchasing of machinery.” ). ") Perhaps in order to ensure greater predictability for defendants attempting to discern where they may be subject to suits on claims arising anywhere in the world,[5](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/minimum-contact-requirements-for-personal-jurisdiction#fn5amd14 " Daimler AG v. Bauman, 571 U.S. 117 (2014) ( “If Daimler’s California activities sufficed to allow adjudication of this Argentina-rooted case in California, the same global reach would presumably be available in every other State in which MBUSA’s sales are sizable. Such exorbitant exercises of all-purpose jurisdiction would scarcely permit out-of-state defendants ‘to structure their primary conduct with some minimum assurance as to where that conduct will and will not render them liable to suit.’” ) (quoting Burger King, 471 U.S. at 472)). ") in more recent years, the Court has significantly limited the types of activities or affiliations of the defendant in the forum state sufficient for general jurisdiction, holding that those contacts must be so substantial as to render the defendant “essentially at home” in the forum state.[6](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/minimum-contact-requirements-for-personal-jurisdiction#fn6amd14 " Goodyear Dunlop Tires Operations, S.A. v. Brown, 564 U.S. 915, 919, 924 (2011) (holding that foreign subsidiaries of Goodyear USA lacked sufficient contacts with the state of North Carolina that would support the exercise of general personal jurisdiction over them because the subsidiaries were not incorporated in California and did not have their principal place of business there). See also Daimler AG, 571 U.S. at 139 (holding that Daimler Chrysler, a German public stock company, could not be subject to suit in California with respect to acts taken in Argentina by an Argentinian subsidiary of Daimler, notwithstanding the fact that Daimler Chrysler had a U.S. subsidiary that did business in California, because Daimler was not incorporated in California and did not have its principal place of business there). ") The Court has clarified that, absent exceptional circumstances, a corporate defendant is “at home” when it is incorporated in the forum state or maintains its principal place of business there.[7](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/minimum-contact-requirements-for-personal-jurisdiction#fn7amd14 " Goodyear, 564 U.S. at 924 (noting an individual’s domicile and a corporation’s place of incorporation or principal place of business as “paradigm” bases for general jurisdiction) (citation omitted); id. at 930 n.6 ( “[E]ven regularly occurring sales of a product in a State do not justify the exercise of jurisdiction over a claim unrelated to those sales.” ). ") Insubstantial in-state business, in and of itself, does not suffice to permit an assertion of jurisdiction over claims that are unrelated to any activity occurring in a state.[8](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/minimum-contact-requirements-for-personal-jurisdiction#fn8amd14 " See BNSF Ry. v. Tyrrell, No. 16-405, slip op. at 11–12 (U.S. May 30, 2017). ") For example, the Court in 2017 held in BNSF Railway v. Tyrrell that Montana courts could not exercise general jurisdiction over a railroad company that had over 2,000 miles of track and more than 2,000 employees in the state because the company was not incorporated or headquartered in Montana and the overall activity of the company in Montana was not “so substantial” as compared to its activities throughout all of the jurisdictions in which it conducted business so as to render the corporation “at home” in the state.[9](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/minimum-contact-requirements-for-personal-jurisdiction#fn9amd14 " Id. ")

Although the Supreme Court has decided only a few cases that explore the scope of general personal jurisdiction since its opinion in International Shoe, leaving the bulk of such determinations to lower federal and state courts, it has decided several cases elaborating on the quality and nature of the defendant’s contacts with the forum and litigation necessary for a court’s exercise of specific jurisdiction over the defendant.[10](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/minimum-contact-requirements-for-personal-jurisdiction#fn10amd14 " Goodyear, 564 U.S. at 924 ( “Since International Shoe, this Court’s decisions have elaborated primarily on circumstances that warrant the exercise of specific jurisdiction, particularly in cases involving ‘single or occasional acts’ occurring or having their impact within the forum State.” ). The Supreme Court has not yet specifically addressed the extent to which Congress might intervene through the enactment of legislation to provide that certain activities of a foreign defendant constitute sufficient minimum contacts for the exercise of personal jurisdiction over a foreign defendant. ") A common theme throughout many of these decisions is that “unilateral activity” in the forum state by a person who has some family, business, or other relationship with a nonresident defendant will not suffice to establish a defendant’s minimum contacts with the forum.[11](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/minimum-contact-requirements-for-personal-jurisdiction#fn11amd14 " Rep. of Arg. v. Weltover, Inc., 504 U.S. 607, 619–20 (1992) (holding that a foreign country defendant had minimum contacts with the United States when it unilaterally rescheduled the maturity dates of bonds it had issued because the bonds were denominated in U.S. dollars, the bonds were payable in New York, and the country had appointed a financial agent in that city); World-Wide Volkswagen Corp. v. Woodson, 444 U.S. 286, 287 (1980) (holding that New York residents’ car accident in Oklahoma involving a car they purchased in New York was insufficient by itself to establish contacts with Oklahoma of nonresident automobile retailer and wholesale distributor in products-liability action); Hanson v. Denckla, 357 U.S. 235, 253–54 (1958) (holding, in a case involving the validity of a trust agreement, that the settlor of a trust’s exercise of her power of appointment in Florida was insufficient to establish nonresident trustees’ contacts with, and purposeful availment of, that forum). ") In other words, jurisdiction is not proper merely because the defendant could have foreseen that a third party with which it has a family or business relationship (for example, a defendant’s family membe