The District Court remanded this debt collection case sua sponte after the defendants’ first removal. Slip op. at 2. They removed again under 28 U.S.C. § 1443, contending that the bank and state district court were violating their due process and equal protection rights. Id. at 2-3. The District Court determined that most of the defendants’ claims did not implicate denial of a right arising under federal law for specific civil rights based on racial equality; thus, those claims failed to satisfy the first prong of section 1443’s two-prong test. Id. at 5-7. The District Court then determined that all of the defendants’ claims failed to satisfy the second prong—an inability to enforce the federal right in state court “due to some formal expression of state law.” Id. at 7-8 (quoting City of Houston v. Club Fetish, No. H-13-0944, 2013 WL 1767777, at *4 (S.D. Tex. April 24, 2013). The District Court also found that the defendants’ removal was frivolous and imposed restrictions on their ability to remove a case in the future. Id. at 8-10.
