Class Actions Brief Blog

This blog often focuses on traditional, opt-out class actions brought under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23, but there is another common form of mass action: collective actions under the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. More than 5,000 collective action lawsuits are filed each year under the FLSA and ADEA, making those claims among the most popular forms of mass action and worthy of continued attention.

The FLSA and ADEA allow for aggregate litigation by providing that claims can be brought by employees on behalf of themselves and “other ...

The Sixth Circuit appears poised to become the fourth federal court of appeals to reject the use of the “juridical link” doctrine as a means to establish Article III standing in a class action. The doctrine, a seldom-used class action legal concept, recognizes an exception to the ordinary Article III standing requirements in instances in which “all defendants are juridically related in a manner that suggests a single resolution of the dispute would be expeditious.” Thompson v. Bd. of Educ. of Romeo Cmty, Sch., 709 F.2d 1200, 1204-05 (6th Cir. 1983).

A “juridical ...

In Snyder-Hill v. Ohio State Univ., the Sixth Circuit, in a 2-to-1 decision, resurrected Title IX claims by more than 100 alleged victims who asserted that they were abused decades ago by a former Ohio State athletic department physician. The issue before the court was whether the district court correctly applied the statute of limitations to dismiss victims’ Title IX claims against Ohio State. The court sided with plaintiffs, holding that, although the abuse that formed the basis of their complaint occurred between 1978 and 1998, the claims did not accrue until 2018, when Ohio ...