Class Actions Brief Blog

Glue is an object commonly found in schools, yet the “glue” that binds class action commonality appears to be a scarce commodity for students with disabilities and their parents. In September 2024, the Fourth Circuit decided that students with disabilities in Kanawha County, West Virginia, had suffered harms too individualized to be addressed together as a class.^[1]

This ruling reversed the trial court’s class certification decision, a ruling by Judge Irene Berger (S.D.W.Va.), who had found commonality among the students in that all had allegedly experienced harm through ...

The United States Supreme Court, in a 5-3 decision authored by Justice Alito, reversed a Ninth Circuit case concluding that detained aliens have a statutory right to periodic bond hearings during the course of their extended detention.  See Jennings v. Rodriguez,  ____ U.S. ____, No. 15-1204 (U.S. Feb. 27, 2018).  The Court found that the Ninth Circuit’s statutory interpretation in favor of detained noncitizens was “implausible.”  In pedagogical fashion, Justice Alito explained that the Ninth Circuit had turned the doctrine of “constitutional avoidance” on its ...

Occasionally, we see something outside of the Carolinas that is quirky enough to merit a mention in this space.  Such is the Seventh Circuit’s recent decision in Mulvania v. Sheriff of Rock Island County, No. 16-1711 (7^th Cir. Mar. 9, 2017).  According to Wikipedia, “In 2015 Rock Island (Illinois) was ranked the 32nd ‘Best Small City’ in the country.”  Not influencing those rankings, apparently, was the policy of the Rock Island County Jail, which “requires female detainees to wear either white underwear or no underwear at all.”  What, you ask, might be the “compelling ...