Also known as: plausibility pleading · plausible pleading standard · plausibility standard · Twombly/Iqbal standard · Twombly standard · Iqbal standard
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
A pleading requirement under which a complaint must allege sufficient factual matter, taken as true, to state a claim that is plausible on its face rather than merely conceivable or consistent with liability.
Prime Logistics sued Pinnacle Holdings and Phoenix Technologies in federal court, claiming the defendants conspired to exclude it from a shipping contract. The complaint alleged only that the defendants had rejected its bids on the same day and shared a common logistics platform. The court granted the motion to dismiss because those facts remained equally consistent with independent business decisions and supplied no basis for inferring an actual agreement.
Penelope Price sued Pulse Media and its contractor, alleging the companies were joint employers who misclassified her as an independent contractor. Her complaint asserted only that Pulse Media exercised total control and that she depended completely on the platform for work, without describing any specific direction over schedules, pay, or supervision. The court granted the motion to dismiss because the bare labels supplied no factual content from which joint employment could be inferred.
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A plaintiff must allege enough nonconclusory factual matter that, taken as true, permits a reasonable inference of liability. Bare labels, legal conclusions, and facts that are merely consistent with liability are disregarded. The remaining allegations must nudge the claim across the line from conceivable to plausible.
Supporting sources
No. Parallel conduct that is equally consistent with independent, lawful decisions does not make an agreement plausible. The complaint must supply additional factual content, such as specific communications or plus factors, that supports a reasonable inference of concerted action rather than mere opportunity or coincidence.
Supporting sources
The court first sets aside legal conclusions and threadbare recitals of the elements. It then examines the remaining well-pleaded factual allegations to determine whether they plausibly give rise to an entitlement to relief. Unsupported assertions such as total control or industry-wide coordination receive no assumption of truth.
Supporting sources
No. The standard requires only that the pleaded facts make liability plausible, not probable. A claim survives if it permits a reasonable inference of wrongdoing even though an innocent explanation remains possible, provided the facts do more than describe conduct consistent with both lawful and unlawful conduct.
Supporting sources
…merely parallel behavior explained in Theatre Enterprises , Monsanto , and Matsushita , and their main argument against the plausibility standard at the pleading stage is its ostensible conflict with an early statement construing Rule 8. Justice Black's opinion for the Court in Conley v. Gibson spoke not only of the need for fair…