CoreCivic, Inc. v. Sylvester Owino, et al., Individually and on Behalf of All Others Similarly Situated

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 establishes that a district court may certify a class action “only if,” among other things, “there are questions of law or fact common to the class.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(a)(2). In the decision below, the Ninth Circuit applied an expressly one-sided, pro-plaintiff standard of review to affirm the district court’s certification of multiple classes, including a nationwide class with more than a million members. In approving the proposed classes, the Ninth Circuit found that the legality of petitioner’s sanitation and disciplinary policies presented a common question warranting class treatment—even without proof that those policies were uniformly applied to the members of the class. The questions presented are:

1. Whether courts of appeals reviewing Rule 23 class certification decisions must, as a matter of law, give district court decisions granting class certification “noticeably more deference” than rulings denying class certification.

2. Whether Rule 23(a)’s commonality requirement is satisfied through the assertion of a purportedly class-wide policy without significant proof that such policy is uniformly applied class-wide.