Cite as: 526 U. S. 574 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
that violates the separation of powers principles underlying Mansfield and Steel Company." In re Papandreou, 139 F. 3d 247, 255 (CADC 1998). It is hardly novel for a federal court to choose among threshold grounds for denying audience to a case on the merits. Thus, as the Court observed in Steel Co., district courts do not overstep Article III limits when they decline jurisdiction of state-law claims on discretionary grounds without determining whether those claims fall within their pendent jurisdiction, see Moor v. County of Alameda, 411 U. S. 693, 715-716 (1973), or abstain under Younger v. Harris, 401 U. S. 37 (1971), without deciding whether the parties present a case or controversy, see Ellis v. Dyson, 421 U. S. 426, 433-434 (1975). See Steel Co., 523 U. S., at 100-101, n. 3; cf. Arizonans for Official English v. Arizona, 520 U. S. 43, 66-67 (1997) (pretermitting challenge to appellants' standing and dismissing on mootness grounds).
B
Maintaining that subject-matter jurisdiction must be decided first even when the litigation originates in federal court, see Tr. of Oral Arg. 21; Brief for Respondents 13, Marathon sees removal as the more offensive case, on the ground that the dignity of state courts is immediately at stake. If a federal court dismisses a removed case for want of personal jurisdiction, that determination may preclude the parties from relitigating the very same personal jurisdiction issue in state court. See Baldwin v. Iowa State Traveling Men's Assn., 283 U. S. 522, 524-527 (1931) (personal jurisdiction ruling has issue-preclusive effect).
Issue preclusion in subsequent state-court litigation, however, may also attend a federal court's subject-matter determination. Ruhrgas hypothesizes, for example, a defendant who removes on diversity grounds a state-court suit seeking $50,000 in compensatory and $1 million in punitive damages for breach of contract. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 10-11. If the district court determines that state law does not allow puni-
585
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