Case Citator › Ashcroft v. Iqbal

Ashcroft v. Iqbal

Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.

Criticized by some courts
Court
Supreme Court of the United States
Citation
556 U.S. 662
Decided
Confirmed treatments
2
Flagged citations read
4,038 of 4,040
Citing cases (total)
149,382
Treatment dates
2014–2020
Criticized by some courts
At least one reviewed court has criticized this case’s reasoning. No reviewed court has overruled it. Ashcroft v. Iqbal remains controlling federal law; one federal district court has criticized it and another has limited it: 4,038 of the 4,040 flagged citations have been read, and the text of the other two citing opinions could not be retrieved. A federal district court criticized the plausibility standard as lacking support in the text of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8, and another declined to extend it to affirmative defenses under Rule 8(c).
More on how this was screened

The Supreme Court of Iowa chose to keep its own pleading standard for Iowa courts rather than adopt Iqbal; that is listed separately below because a state's choice about its own procedure does not weaken Iqbal as federal law. The other citing opinions applied Iqbal's pleading and personal-liability rules, identified Iqbal as the authority that displaced earlier circuit precedent, or used nearby treatment language about other authorities.

The treatments below are confirmed; unread citations could still change the overall status.
Every treatment on this page is written from the citing opinion itself, with a verbatim quote, never copied from a commercial citator. A citation flagged by our screen but not shown here was read and found not to weaken this case, except the ones whose text could not be retrieved.

149,382 later cases cite Ashcroft v. Iqbal; 4,040 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading; 4,038 of them have been read, and the text of 2 citing opinions could not be retrieved, so those remain unread. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.

Relying on Ashcroft v. Iqbal?

This page shows what later courts did to it. Ask about your specific facts and see whether it still carries your argument, with citations you can check.

Treatments

Criticized

  • The court criticized Iqbal's plausibility standard as a judicially grafted requirement unsupported by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8's text.

    In re National Prescription Opiate Litigation · N.D. Ohio · filed

    In two cases of more recent vintage, Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544 (2007), and Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662 (2009), the Court grafted a “plausibility standard” onto the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure’s pleading requirement, Twombly, 550 U.S. at 560–61. Although the standard finds no support in Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8’s text, the Court determined that courts must conduct a “plausibility” analysis at the pleading stage
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

Limited

  • The court declined to extend Iqbal's Rule 8(a) plausibility standard to affirmative defenses pleaded under Rule 8(c).

    Newborn Bros. Co. v. Albion Engineering Co. · D.N.J. · filed

    This Court joins those courts in the District of New Jersey and other district courts within the Third Circuit which have held that the heightened Twombly/Iqbal standard is not applicable to the pleading of affirmative defenses under Rule 8(c) which simply requires that party responding to a pleading must ‘affirmatively state any avoidance or affirmative defense.’
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

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