Litigation Byte

SCOTUS to Decide Whether a Class Can Be Certified Despite Some of Members Lacking Damages

May 5, 2025

On April 29, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings, d/b/a Labcorp v. Davis et al., No. 24-304 (2025 Term) to determine whether certification is appropriate in a class action when certain class members may have not suffered a cognizable injury under Article III of the U.S. Constitution.

Background and Procedural History

In Davis, Luke Davis and Julian Vargas commenced a class action against Labcorp in January 2020 alleging discrimination in violation of Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. § 12101 et seq., California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act, Cal. Civ. Code § 51 et seq., California’s Disabled Persons Act (CDPA), Cal. Civ. Code § 54 et seq., Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, 29 U.S.C. § 794(a), and Section 1557 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, 42 U.S.C. § 8116, arising from Labcorp’s alleged failure to provide necessary auxiliary aids and services for full and equal access to Labcorp’s touchscreen self-service kiosks.

On May 23, 2022, the District Court certified two classes. The nationwide injunctive class was defined to include “all legally blind individuals in the United States who visited a Labcorp patient service center in the United States during the applicable limitations period and were denied full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations due to Labcorp’s failure to make its e-check-in kiosks accessible to legally blind individuals.” The California class for Unruh Act and CDPA claims was similarly defined to consist of legally blind individuals in California who visited Labcorp patient service centers in California during the limitations period.

The District Court subsequently refined the definitions of both classes to contain all legally blind individuals who visited a LabCorp patient service center with a LabCorp Express Self-Service kiosk in the United States or in California during the applicable limitations period, and who, due to their disability, were unable to use the LabCorp Express Self-Service kiosk. Labcorp appealed.

On February 8, 2024, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed, finding that both the class representative and the unnamed class members had sufficiently suffered an injury to establish Article III standing. Specifically, the Ninth Circuit found that “Vargas established an injury sufficient to confer standing” and that “[b]ecause all class members maintain that their injury resulted from the inaccessibility of a LabCorp kiosk, the commonality requirement is satisfied.” Further, the Court concluded that the members of the nationwide class were injured in the same manner and that “by adding technological accommodations, the kiosks could be rendered accessible to the blind, thus addressing the injuries of the entire class.” Thus, the Court held that the District Court did not abuse its discretion in certifying the classes.

On January 24, 2025, the SCOTUS granted Labcorp’s certiorari petition, requesting the Court to decide “[w]hether a federal court may certify a class action when some of its members lack any Article III injury.”

Arguments on Appeal to SCOTUS

Labcorp argued in its opening brief that “if a person cannot pursue his own damages in court by himself, he can’t do so by joining a certified Rule 23(b)(3) class[, as o]therwise, Rule 23 would run afoul of both the Rules Enabling Act (by expanding a plaintiff’s substantive rights) and the separation of powers (by allowing a court to declare the rights of an uninjured litigant).” Moreover, Labcorp asserted that the certification of classes was improper even if Article III standing was adequately examined by the Ninth Circuit, because Rule 23(b)(3) “forbids certification of a damages class unless common questions predominate over those affecting only individual members.”

In response, plaintiffs argued that the certified question should be dismissed as improvidently granted, and that the proper analysis is qualitative, focusing on how difficult it will be to identify uninjured members. Furthermore, they asserted that Article III does not bar certification of a class containing uninjured members, because “[a]t certification, only the named plaintiff, as the party invoking federal jurisdiction, must show standing.”

Oral Arguments

At oral argument, Justice Thomas and several of his colleagues inquired about the Court’s jurisdiction over the May 23, 2022 order, which initially certified the classes, in light of the subsequent order of the District Court refining the definitions of both classes. This question appeared to seize on arguments raised by plaintiffs’ counsel in their brief to the Court that “Labcorp now effectively concedes … that the August class definition—the only definition that Labcorp challenged in its merits briefing below, its petition for certiorari, and its briefing to this Court—is not within this Court’s certiorari jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1254.”

Labcorp countered that any alleged failure to challenge the class definitions in the May 22, 2023 order is of no significance since Labcorp “is challenging the Ninth Circuit’s judgment, not a particular definition discussed in the lower court’s opinion.” In response to Justice Thomas’ question at oral argument, Labcorp’s counsel reiterated that the Court has jurisdiction to review the judgment of the Ninth Circuit, which Labcorp’s petition brought up on the instant appeal. The United States echoed that the Court has jurisdiction to correct an error of law in the judgment issued by the Ninth Circuit.

Justice Jackson questioned Labcorp’s argument that the inclusion of uninjured members in a class violates Article III by observing that a class claim for violation of a law only requires one of the named plaintiffs to establish injury for standing purposes. However, Labcorp’s counsel responded that the “Court has never applied the one-plaintiff rule to a damages case, which I think because, by definition, in a damages case, every plaintiff is seeking his own form of damages” and cited to Town of Chester v. Laroe Estates, Inc., 581 U.S. 433 (2017), to support Labcorp’s position that the harm to each person in a class must be considered. Still, Justice Jackson pondered why it even matters that the class may include uninjured persons.

Justice Kagan also engaged in a discussion with Labcorp’s counsel regarding the importance of resolving the Article III issue at the class certification juncture of the litigation. Ultimately, Justice Kagan disagreed with Labcorp’s assertion that the inclusion of uninjured members in a class subjects it to increased liability exposure, requiring the Court to address the standing issue in the context of class certification, because “as long as the court figures this question out before the court actually does anything with respect to those claims, that seems to me good enough … they’re just riding along … [and] they’re not affecting the litigation in any way.”  

However, Justice Kavanaugh noted Labcorp’s concerns with being pressured into settlement of claims due to the certification of an overly broad class that potentially includes disproportionate number of uninjured members and thereby skews assessment of potential exposure and settlement to mitigate against it.

Finally, despite the Government initially advising Judge Gorsuch that it had no position on whether Article III requires all members to have an injury for a class to be certified, its counsel ultimately proposed that Rule 23 “requires that a class cannot be certified unless all class members share the same injury, including an Article III injury.”

Conclusion

On the balance, the demeanor of the Justices during oral argument and the substance of their exchanges with counsel indicate the Court’s general belief that the District Court’s May 23, 2022 order was properly limited to injured persons and that the courts are not required, at the class certification stage, to ensure that each member of the proposed class satisfies the Article III standing requirement given the representative nature of such proceedings and claims administrators’ track record of weeding out uninjured from legitimate claimants. However, it remains to be seen how the Court will ultimately rule. 

Regardless, the Davis case highlights how fundamental constitutional standing under Article III could impact certification of a class. Despite the shifting interests of defendants in class actions concerning certification of broad classes, the importance of defining a reliable mechanism to bar the inclusion of uninjured persons from a class of claimants is undeniable. Davis also underscores that appeals, including petitions for certiorari, should be crafted in a manner that staves off jurisdictional challenges thereto.