Sarah Hinkes v. Ravi Reddy

── Sarah Hinkes v. Ravi Reddy ── Court: Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Date: May 22, 2026 Category: General In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ No. 25-1268 SARAH HINKES, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. SUNERA TECHNOLOGIES, INC.; RAVI K. REDDY; and SREENIVASA SETTY, Defendants-Appellees. ____________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 19 C 8183 — LaShonda A. Hunt, Judge. ____________________ ARGUED OCTOBER 27, 2025 — DECIDED MAY 22, 2026 ____________________ Before EASTERBROOK, ROVNER, and SCUDDER, Circuit Judges. EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. Sarah Hinkes sued her em- ployer and two other employees for several forms of discrim- ination that she said violated federal statutes. The suit was stayed in favor of arbitration. 9 U.S.C. §3; Smith v. Spizzirri, 601 U.S. 472 (2024). After the arbitrator ruled in the em- ployer’s favor, Hinkes asked the district court to set aside the 2 No. 25-1268 award. Instead the judge confirmed it, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 10182 (N.D. Ill. Jan. 21, 2025), and Hinkes appealed. Her appellate brief asserts that subject-ma_er jurisdiction rests on 28 U.S.C. §1332, which applies when all plaintiffs have citizenship different from all defendants. Yet both Hinkes and Ravi Reddy, one of the defendants, are citizens of Illinois. She asked us to ignore Reddy on the ground that her appeal does not request any relief against him. But Reddy re- mains a party, as Hinkes did not use her opportunity to dis- miss him in order to secure complete diversity of citizenship. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 21; Newman-Green, Inc. v. Alfonzo-Larrain, 490 U.S. 826, 832–38 (1989). After oral argument, we directed the parties to file supple- mental briefs addressing subject-ma_er jurisdiction. Hinkes changed her tune, called Reddy a necessary party, and asked us to dismiss the appeal. That’s an odd request: the appeal is hers, and she has been free to dismiss it at any time. Fed. R. App. P. 42(b). What she wants is vacatur of the arbitration award. Dismissal of the appeal, by contrast, would leave in place the district court’s decision confirming the award. Sunera, the employer, proposed a source of subject-ma_er jurisdiction that does not rely on diverse citizenship: the fed- eral-question jurisdiction of 28 U.S.C. §1331. Whether the award is confirmable is not itself a federal question. See Badgerow v. Walters, 596 U.S. 1 (2022). But Hinkes’s suit arises under federal law and so comes within §1331. That suit was stayed in favor of arbitration, and Sunera’s motion to confirm was filed in it. Under Kinsella v. Baker Hughes Oilfield Opera- tions, LLC, 66 F.4th 1099 (7th Cir. 2023), the source of jurisdic- tion that underlies the original (stayed) suit continues to ap- ply when a court decides whether to confirm an arbitrator’s award. We deferred decision in this appeal while the Supreme No. 25-1268 3 Court resolved a conflict on that question. Jules v. Andre Balazs Properties, No. 25–83 (U.S. May 14, 2026), agrees with Kinsella. It follows that the district judge had subject-ma_er jurisdic- tion to confirm (or set aside) the result of the arbitration. All of Hinkes’s arguments against confirmation are proce- dural and rest principally on 9 U.S.C. §10(a)(3). She contends that the arbitrators considered evidence that had not been dis- closed during discovery and that some of the admi_ed evi- dence was hearsay. The district court did not see a problem. Nor do we. Section 10(a)(3) says that a court must set aside an award when the arbitrators were guilty of misconduct in refusing to postpone the hearing, upon sufficient cause shown, or in refusing to h