DECISION AND ORDER I. Introduction In this diversity action, Plaintiff alleges that Defendant Jo-Ann Stores, LLC, her employer, failed to pay Plaintiff and its other “manual workers” on a weekly basis, violating New York Labor Law §191(1)(a)(i). Plaintiff, a New York employee of Defendant Jo-Ann Stores (an Ohio limited liability company), sues for herself and a class of similar Jo-Ann Stores employees from the last six years, alleging that they were paid biweekly in violation of the Labor Law, leading to late payments. (Docket No. 1, Compl.) Before this Court is Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss for failure to state a claim and lack of jurisdiction because Plaintiff and her putative class lacked Article III standing (Docket No. 13, Def. Motion to Dismiss). For the reasons stated below, this Court terminates Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss (Docket No. 13). Plaintiff is directed to file an Amended Complaint, consistent with the discussion below addressing the extent of harm suffered by not being paid on a weekly basis to allege Article III standing. If Plaintiff fails to file this Amended Complaint, Defendant may renew its present Motion to Dismiss. II. Background A. Alleged Facts According to the Complaint (Docket No. 1), Defendant failed to pay Plaintiff and the putative class of manual workers on a timely basis by paying them biweekly rather than weekly as required by Labor Law §191(1). Plaintiff seeks to recover the amount of untimely paid wages as liquidated damages, attorney’s fees, costs, pre — and post-judgment interest. (Id.
19-20, 21.) Plaintiff was employed by Defendant at its Batavia, New York, store from July 2019 to January 2021 and at its Williamsville, New York, store from January to June 2021 (id. 11). She claims that at least a quarter of her job responsibilities included manual labor (such as cutting fabrics for customers, stocking inventory, and working on the sales floor and at the cash register) (id.). The Complaint also alleges a class of all persons who worked as manual workers for Defendant in New York for six years before July 13, 2021 (when Plaintiff filed her Complaint) (id. 12). B. Proceedings After this Court extended Defendant’s time to respond to the Complaint (Docket No. 10), Defendant moved to Dismiss (Docket No. 131). Initially, responses to this Motion were due by November 29, 2021 (Docket No. 14). The parties’ moved to extend the briefing deadlines (Docket No. 15) which this Court granted; responses then were due by December 6, 2021, and reply by December 20, 2021 (Docket No. 16). The responses and replies then were timely (Docket Nos. 17, 18) and this Court now grants leave to supplement the authorities cited herein (cf. Docket Nos. 19, 20, 21, 22). As briefed, the Motion is deemed submitted without oral argument. III. Discussion A. Applicable Standards 1. Motion to Dismiss Under Rule 12(b)(6), this Court cannot dismiss a Complaint unless it appears “beyond doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claim which would entitle him to relief.” Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 45-46, 78 S.Ct. 99, 2 L.Ed.2d 80 (1957). As the Supreme Court held in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 554, 127 S.Ct. 1955, 167 L.Ed.2d 929 (2007), a Complaint must be dismissed pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6) if it does not plead “enough facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face,” id. at 570 (rejecting longstanding precedent of Conley, supra, 355 U.S. at 45-46). To survive a motion to dismiss, the factual allegations in the Complaint “must be enough to raise a right to relief above the speculative level,” Twombly, supra, 550 U.S. at 555. As reaffirmed by the Court in Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 129 S.Ct. 1937, 173 L.Ed.2d 868 (2009), “To survive a motion to dismiss, a complaint must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.’ [Twombly, supra, 550 U.S.] at 570…. A claim has facial plausibility when the plaintiff pleads factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged. Id., at 556…. The plausibility standard is not akin to a ‘probability requirement,’ but it asks for more than a sheer possibility that a defendant has acted unlawfully. Ibid. Where a complaint pleads facts that are ‘merely consistent with’ a defendant’s liability, it ‘stops short of the line between possibility and plausibility of “entitlement to relief.”‘ Id., at 557…(brackets omitted).” Iqbal, supra, 556 U.S. at 678 (citations omitted). A Rule 12(b)(6) motion is addressed to the face of the pleading. The pleading is deemed to include any document attached to it as an exhibit, Fed. R. Civ. P. 10(c), or any document incorporated in it by reference, Goldman v. Belden, 754 F.2d 1059 (2d Cir. 1985). In considering such a motion, the Court must accept as true all the well pleaded facts alleged in the Complaint. Bloor v. Carro, Spanbock, Londin, Rodman & Fass, 754 F.2d 57 (2d Cir. 1985). However, conclusory allegations that merely state the general legal conclusions necessary to prevail on the merits and are unsupported by factual averments will not be accepted as true. New York State Teamsters Council Health and Hosp. Fund v. Centrus Pharmacy Solutions, 235 F. Supp. 2d 123 (N.D.N.Y. 2002). 2. Article III Standing Defendant alternatively argues that Plaintiff (and her class) lacks Article III standing to sue (Docket No. 13, Def. Memo. at 17-18). Standing is a threshold matter, Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 498, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (1975); Anderson Grp., LLC v. City of Saratoga Springs, 805 F.3d 34, 44 (2d Cir. 2015). Standing “involves both constitutional limitations on federal-court jurisdiction and prudential limitations on its exercise,” Warth, supra, 422 U.S. at 498. Where the litigant lacks standing, this Court also lacks subject matter jurisdiction over that party’s case, Central States Se. and Sw. Areas Health and Welfare Fund v. Merck-Medco Managed Care, L.L.C., 433 F.3d 181, 198 (2d Cir. 2005). Without satisfying Article III standing, “a federal court has no subject matter jurisdiction to hear the merits of a plaintiff’s — or, in this case, the class plaintiffs’ — claim: ‘Without jurisdiction [a] court cannot proceed at all in any cause. Jurisdiction is power to declare the law, and when it ceases to exist, the only function remaining to the court is that of announcing the fact and dismissing the case,’” id. (quoting Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Env’t, 523 U.S. 83, 94, 118 S.Ct. 1003, 140 L.Ed.2d 210 (1998) (quoting in turn Ex parte McCardle, 74 U.S. (7 Wall.) 506, 514, 19 L.Ed. 264 (1868)). “A federal court’s jurisdiction can be invoked only when the plaintiff himself has suffered ‘some threatened or actual injury resulting from the putative illegal action,” Warth, supra, 422 U.S. at 498 (citation omitted). “Standing to sue is a doctrine rooted in the traditional understanding of a case or controversy,” Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 578 U.S. 330, 338, 136 S.Ct. 1540, 194 L.Ed.2d 635 (2016); see U.S. Const. art. III, §2, cl.1. Article III standing requires Plaintiff to demonstrate injury-in-fact, a “causal connection” between that injury and Defendant’s conduct, and a likelihood “that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision,” with that likelihood more than being merely speculative, Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560-61, 112 S.Ct. 2130, 119 L.Ed.2d 351 (1992) (internal quotation marks omitted). Plaintiff bears the burden of demonstrating his or her standing, id. at 561. As recently stated by the Supreme Court, “to have Article III standing to sue in federal court, plaintiffs must demonstrate, among other things, that they suffered a concrete harm,” TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, 594 U.S. ___, 141 S.Ct. 2190, 2200, 210 L.Ed.2d 568 (2021). Plaintiff must have “suffered an injury in fact that is concrete, particularized, and actual or imminent,” id., 141 S.Ct. at 2203. “To be concrete, an injury must actually exist, that is it must be real and not abstract,” Strubel v. Comenity Bank, 842 F.3d 181, 188 (2d Cir. 2016). The Court in TransUnion held that “under Article III, an injury in law is not an injury in fact. Only those plaintiffs who have been concretely harmed by a defendant’s statutory violation may sue that private defendant over that violation in federal court,” TransUnion, supra, 141 S.Ct. at 2205 (emphasis in original). Or as summarized in that decision, “no concrete harm, no standing,” id. at 2200, 2214. 3. New York Labor Law Under Article 6 for Payment of Wages of the New York Labor Law, New York State requires employers to make weekly payments of manual workers’ salaries “and no later than seven calendar days after the end of the week in which the wages are earned,” N.Y. Labor Law §191(1)(a). An employer with one thousand employees or more may be authorized by the New York State Commissioner of Labor to pay its employees less frequently than weekly but not less frequently than semi-monthly, id. This waiver is not alleged here (see Docket No. 1, Compl.
