Supreme Court To Address Article III Standing Problems In Class Actions — Again

On January 24, 2024, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in the case of Laboratory Corp. of America v. Davis, No. 24-0304, to decide "[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." If that question sounds familiar, that's because it was not the first time the Court set out to address it. In 2020, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez to decide a similar question: "[w]hether either Article III or Rule 23 permits a damages class action where the vast majority of the class suffered no actual injury."

But the Court managed to decide TransUnion without actually answering it. The problem was that TransUnion came to the Supreme Court at an unusual procedural posture for a class action — after a full trial and a $60 million verdict in favor of the certified class, and after the uninjured class members had already