166
Opinion of the Court
express statutory exception, see § 1367(a)). ICS seemed to recognize as much in the amended complaint it filed in the District Court following removal, stating that the nonfederal claims "are subject to this Court's pendent jurisdiction." App. 143. We conclude, in short, that the District Court properly exercised federal question jurisdiction over the federal claims in ICS' complaints, and properly recognized that it could thus also exercise supplemental jurisdiction over ICS' state law claims.
B
ICS, urging us to adopt the reasoning of the Court of Appeals, argues that the District Court was without jurisdiction over its actions because they contain state law claims that require on-the-record review of the Landmarks Commission's decisions. A claim that calls for deferential judicial review of a state administrative determination, ICS asserts, does not constitute a "civil action . . . of which the district courts of the United States have original jurisdiction" under 28 U. S. C. § 1441(a).
That reasoning starts with an erroneous premise. Because this is a federal question case, the relevant inquiry is not, as ICS submits, whether its state claims for on-the-record review of the Commission's decisions are "civil actions" within the "original jurisdiction" of a district court: The District Court's original jurisdiction derives from ICS' federal claims, not its state law claims. Those federal claims suffice to make the actions "civil actions" within the "original jurisdiction" of the district courts for purposes of removal. § 1441(a). The Court of Appeals, in fact, acknowledged that ICS' federal claims, "if brought alone, would be removable to federal court." 91 F. 3d, at 993. Nothing in the jurisdictional statutes suggests that the presence of related state law claims somehow alters the fact that ICS' complaints, by virtue of their federal claims, were "civil actions" within the federal courts' "original jurisdiction."
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