Marcos Montes v. Janitorial Partners, Inc.

KAREN LeCRAFT HENDERSON, Circuit Judge:

Manuel Montes sued his employer for wage underpayment. When his employer failed to respond, Montes obtained a default judgment for himself and two fellow employees. But there was a problem: the statute he sued under required the fellow employees to formally “opt in” to the lawsuit. They had not done so. Reacting to their failure, the district court vacated its default judgment as to Montes’s two fellow employees, concluding it had lacked subject matter jurisdiction to enter it. That was error. The opt-in omission did not oust the court of subject matter…