There are two ways in which employment law claims are brought before the court and require a MANDATORY COURT APPEARANCE:
- Cases are filed in court after the conclusion of a proceeding before a federal or state agency as an appeal by a party of an adverse agency finding.
- In cases, where no agencies exist to enforce certain employment law rights, claims to enforce those rights are brought before a state or federal court in the first instances.
A party must first determine in which court to file a case. Under the concept of the constitutional separation of powers, not all courts have jurisdiction over all cases. Jurisdiction is simply the power of the court to determine a particular case. A court’s jurisdiction is first limited geographically. A court in a county in a particular state may only have geographical jurisdiction over cases that arise in that particular county. (e.g.: a state appeals court in the state of Indiana can only hear appeals of Indiana cases. A federal district court for the Southern District of New York can only try cases that originate in certain southern counties in New York.)
The second type of jurisdictional limiting of a court’s ability to try cases is called subject-matter jurisdiction. Subject-matter jurisdiction limits the types of cases that a court can hear. (e.g.: federal courts generally do not have subject matter jurisdiction over employment claims under state statutes. A party that has a claim under state law must ordinarily file the claim in the state court system.
Sometimes, parties have choices as to whether to file employment-law cases in state or federal court. Claims under the Fair Labor Standard Act may be filed in either a state or federal court. Likewise, under a concept known as pendent jurisdiction, parties may sometimes bring state law employment claims before a federal court if the facts of their case also give rise to violations of federal laws.
Pendent jurisdiction is the grant of jurisdiction to federal courts over state law claims where federal law claims also exists of the same events so that a case does not have to be tried in two different courts.