On January 24, 2025, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Lab. Corp. of Am. Holdings v. Davis, Case No. 24-304, on the question of “[w]hether a federal court may certify a class action pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(3) when some members of the proposed class lack any Article III injury.” In TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, 594 U.S. 413, 431 (2021), the Supreme Court made clear that “[e]very class member must have Article III standing in order to recover individual damages,” but the Court did not answer the question of when a class member’s standing must be established and whether a class can be certified if it contains uninjured class members.
Since Transunion, the question of whether a court can even certify a class in the first place if it contains uninjured class members has divided the Circuits. Some courts have denied class certification if there are uninjured class members while other courts have found that questions of class member standing can be addressed after certification. Even the courts that have denied class certification are not in agreement, with some finding that the issue arises under Article III and others addressing the impact of uninjured class members in the context of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23. Those addressing the issue under Article III have generally found that Article III bars certification where the class includes any class member who lacks standing, while courts addressing the issue under Rule 23 usually find that more than a de minimis number of uninjured class members will cause individual issues to predominate over common ones. Thus, until now, whether a class could be certified with any uninjured class members—and, if so, how many class members were permitted to be uninjured for the class to still be certified—largely depended on where the case was pending. The Supreme Court is now poised to address the question of when and how class member standing must be addressed and what impact it has on class certification.
The Court has ordered an accelerated briefing schedule in the matter — the Petitioner’s brief on the merits is to be filed on or before March 5, 2025; Respondents’ brief on the merits is to be filed on or before March 31, 2025; and the reply brief is to be filed by April 21, 2025. This accelerated schedule indicates that the Court will hear and decide the case this term. We should therefore have an answer by late June/early July 2025 on whether a federal court can certify a class containing uninjured class members under Rule 23(b)(3).
We will keep you posted with further developments in the case.