Gerard E. Lynch, Circuit Judge:
Respondent-appellant Matthew Swain appeals from a judgment of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Colleen McMahon, Chief Judge). On appeal, Swain argues that the district court lacked subject matter jurisdiction over a petition to compel arbitration brought by petitioner-appellee Hermès of Paris, Inc. ("Hermès") under § 4 of the Federal Arbitration Act ("FAA"). For the reasons set forth below, we conclude that the district court had diversity jurisdiction and accordingly AFFIRM its judgment.
In November 2015, Swain was fired from his job with Hermès managing the company's boutique at the Mall at Short Hills in New Jersey. In July 2016, Swain, a New Jersey resident, sued Hermès in New Jersey state court, asserting claims under New Jersey state law for discrimination and hostile work environment on the basis of sexual orientation, retaliation, and breach of contract. Swain named as defendants in that suit Hermès, and Lorenzo Bautista, who worked with Swain at the Short Hills Hermès store.
Thereafter, asserting federal jurisdiction based on diversity of citizenship, Hermès filed a petition in the district court to compel arbitration pursuant to § 4 of the FAA, naming Swain as the only respondent and citing a dispute resolution protocol that he had allegedly signed in August 2015.
On appeal, Swain does not contest the arbitrability of his dispute with Hermès, arguing instead that the district court lacked subject matter jurisdiction due to a lack of complete diversity of citizenship. He does not dispute that the parties to the petition to compel arbitration
Swain's argument is foreclosed by our decision in Doctor's Associates, Inc. v. Distajo, 66 F.3d 438 (2d Cir. 1995). In Distajo, we held that in evaluating whether the requirement of complete diversity is satisfied, a court assessing its jurisdiction over an FAA petition is to "look[] only to the citizenship of the parties in the action before it" — that is, the "parties to the petition to compel" as well as any indispensable parties who must be joined pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 19.
In so holding, we rejected the "look-through" approach that Swain urges here, reasoning that § 4 of the FAA provides for jurisdiction over a suit arising out of a controversy between "the parties," which "most sensibly refers to those persons who are parties to the arbitration agreement — and who therefore can be named in the petition to compel arbitration." Id. at 445 (internal quotation marks omitted). Adopting the argument made by the petitioner in Distajo, we reasoned that requiring that the parties to the underlying dispute be completely diverse would "fatally undermine[]" the FAA because it would allow "a
Swain argues, however, that the Supreme Court's ruling in Vaden v. Discover Bank, 556 U.S. 49, 129 S.Ct. 1262, 173 L.Ed.2d 206 (2009), requires that courts look through the petition to the underlying suit for purposes of determining whether complete diversity is satisfied, thus abrogating Distajo. That argument is simply incorrect. The Supreme Court's decision in Vaden deals with the entirely different question of determining whether a district court has federal question jurisdiction over a petition to compel arbitration. In contrast to the unanimous rejection by the Circuits of the look-through approach to assessing complete diversity for the purposes of diversity jurisdiction, the Courts of Appeals had split over whether to look to the underlying lawsuit in determining federal question jurisdiction. Compare Westmoreland Capital Corp. v. Findlay, 100 F.3d 263, 268 (2d Cir. 1996) (holding that a federal court does not have subject matter jurisdiction over a petition to compel arbitration "merely because the underlying claim raises a federal question"), with Discover Bank v. Vaden, 396 F.3d 366, 368-70 (4th Cir. 2005) (holding that a district court may "look through" the petition to compel arbitration "to assess whether the overall controversy between the parties is grounded in federal law"). In Vaden, the Supreme Court resolved that issue, expressly rejecting our precedent in Westmoreland and holding that courts may look through § 4 petitions to the underlying dispute to determine whether they are predicated on actions arising under federal law. Vaden, 556 U.S. at 62, 129 S.Ct. 1262; see also Doscher v. Sea Port Grp. Sec., LLC, 832 F.3d 372, 380 (2d Cir. 2016) (recognizing Vaden's overruling of Westmoreland).
Nowhere in Vaden, however, did the Court address whether a look-through approach should likewise apply where courts assert diversity jurisdiction over an FAA petition. Indeed, the Court specifically noted that diversity of citizenship was not available as a jurisdictional basis for the petition at issue in Vaden, 556 U.S. at 54 n.1, 129 S.Ct. 1262, and expressly limited its endorsement of the look-through approach to the context of federal question jurisdiction, stating that it "approve[d] the `look through' approach to this extent: A federal court may `look through' a § 4 petition to determine whether it is predicated on an action that `arises under' federal law," id. at 62, 129 S.Ct. 1262 (emphasis added). At no point in Vaden did the Court question the continuing viability of the approach to diversity jurisdiction articulated in Distajo, which had been uniformly embraced at the time by all of the Circuits to have addressed the issue, and which has continued to be followed by those Circuits to have addressed the issue following Vaden. See supra n. 5 (collecting cases).
For the foregoing reasons, we AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.