Cite as: 515 U. S. 417 (1995)
Opinion of Ginsburg, J.
eral court concludes that the employee acted outside the scope of his employment, and if the tort plaintiff and the employee resubstituted as defendant are not of diverse citizenship, amicus urges, then the federal court will be left with a case without a federal question to support the court's subject-matter jurisdiction. This last-pressed argument by amicus largely drives the dissent. See post, at 440-443.
This case itself, we note, presents not even the specter of an Article III problem. The case was initially instituted in federal court; it was not removed from a state court. The parties' diverse citizenship gave petitioners an entirely secure basis for filing in federal court.
In any event, we do not think the Article III problem amicus describes is a grave one. There may no longer be a federal question once the federal employee is resubstituted as defendant, but in the category of cases amicus hypothesizes, there was a nonfrivolous federal question, certified by the local United States Attorney, when the case was removed to federal court. At that time, the United States was the defendant, and the action was thus under the FTCA. Whether the employee was acting within the scope of his federal employment is a significant federal question—and the Westfall Act was designed to assure that this question could be aired in a federal forum. See supra, at 430-432. Because a case under the Westfall Act thus "raises [a] questio[n] of substantive federal law at the very outset," it "clearly 'arises under' federal law, as that term is used in Art. III." Verlinden B. V. v. Central Bank of Nigeria, 461 U. S. 480, 493 (1983).
In adjudicating the scope-of-federal-employment question "at the very outset," the court inevitably will confront facts relevant to the alleged misconduct, matters that bear on the state tort claims against the employee. Cf. Mine Workers v. Gibbs, 383 U. S. 715, 725 (1966) (approving exercise of pendent jurisdiction when federal and state claims have "a common nucleus of operative fact" and would "ordinarily be
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