Opinion ID: 6329539
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: b. v. hawaii state dep’t of educ. 23

Text: Coach Martinez and replaced him with a “far less experienced coach,” eliminated the girls’ softball team’s assistant coaches, and took a variety of other actions that “disrupted” the girls’ softball program. Id. at 869. On appeal, the defendants made a series of arguments that resemble those made by the Department here. Specifically, the Ollier defendants argued that the named plaintiffs “lack[ed] standing to enjoin the retaliatory action allegedly taken against Coach Martinez”; that they also “lack[ed] standing because it was not they who made the Title IX complaints”; and that classwide relief was unwarranted because “only some members of the plaintiff[s’] class . . . can urge they engaged in protected activity.” Id. at 865–66, 868. We rejected all of these contentions, concluding that they rested on too restrictive a view of Title IX’s cause of action for retaliation. Id. at 866–69. We held that the named plaintiffs clearly asserted a sufficient injury-in-fact to satisfy Article III, because their “prospects for competing were hampered” when the defendants “impermissibly retaliated against them by firing Coach Martinez.” Id. at 865 (emphasis in original). We also recognized, however, that what the defendants characterized as “standing” arguments actually rested primarily on the general prudential rule against asserting the rights of third parties. Id. (citing Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 499 (1975)); cf. Lexmark Int’l, Inc. v. Static Control Components, Inc., 572 U.S. 118, 126 (2014) (noting that “the general prohibition on a litigant’s raising another person’s legal rights” is “not derived from Article III,” but reflects what has inexactly been called the “‘prudential’ branch of standing”). Addressing the question that way, we held that the named plaintiffs could assert a Title IX retaliation claim based on retaliatory actions that were directed at another person (Coach Martinez) and that were triggered by 24 A. B. V. HAWAII STATE DEP’T OF EDUC. complaints made by others (Coach Martinez and various parents). Ollier, 768 F.3d at 866–67. In reaching that conclusion, we noted that the Supreme Court had addressed a somewhat similar individual thirdparty retaliation claim under Title VII in Thompson v. North American Stainless, LP, 562 U.S. 170, 177–78 (2011). See Ollier, 768 F.3d at 866. There, both Thompson and his fiancée worked in the same company, and the allegation was that Thompson was fired in retaliation for complaints about sex discrimination made by his fiancée. Thompson, 562 U.S. at 172. The Court held that, because Thompson was within the “zone of interests” protected by Title VII, he had a cause of action for retaliation even though his fiancée was the one who had engaged in the protected activity that led to the retaliation. Id. at 177–78. We concluded in Ollier that this same zone-of-interest analysis applies to Title IX, and we therefore considered whether the named plaintiffs in that case were “within the ‘zone of interests’ that Title IX’s implicit antiretaliation provisions seek to protect.” Ollier, 768 F.3d at 866; see also Lexmark, 572 U.S. at 127 & n.3 (suggesting that, in many cases, “third-party standing” is really an issue of whether the party has a cause of action under a statute, which in turn depends in part on the zone-ofinterests test). Because those named plaintiffs were students who had suffered a diminished athletic experience due to retaliation, we concluded that they easily fell within Title IX’s zone of interests. Ollier, 768 F.3d at 866. They therefore had a cause of action under Title IX to seek redress for those injuries, despite the fact that the actual Title IX complaints that led to the retaliation were “made by their parents and Coach Martinez.” Id. at 866–67. We similarly held that classwide injunctive relief was properly awarded in Ollier, despite the fact that many of the A. B. V. HAWAII STATE DEP’T OF EDUC. 25 class members had not even been “members of the softball team at the time of retaliation.” Id. at 868. In so holding, we reiterated the breadth of Title IX’s zone of interests, see id. (citing Thompson, 562 U.S. at 178), and asserted that we had approved similarly broadly-defined classes that included “all current and future” female students, id. (citation omitted). Because the class members in Ollier had been affected by the retaliation and were within the zone of interests protected by Title IX’s prohibition on retaliation, the district court properly extended its grant of injunctive relief “so as to vindicate the rights of former and future students.” Id. Although Ollier did not directly address the issue of class certification, see id. at 854 n.4, it is clear that the district court’s application of Rule 23(a)’s requirements to Plaintiffs’ retaliation claim in this case cannot be reconciled with Ollier’s analysis of the law governing such claims. Here, as in Ollier, the specific Title IX complaints that led to the retaliation were made only by a particular subset of people (here, particular students and parents associated with the water polo team). But the concerns those persons raised swept more broadly to include Campbell’s treatment of girls’ athletics generally, and Plaintiffs have likewise presented evidence that the resulting retaliation had a deterrent effect on female students more generally. See supra at 22. Thus, under Ollier’s reasoning, those other putative class members—even those not on the water polo team—would fall within Title IX’s zone of interests and would have a cause of action for equitable relief against the Department’s retaliatory actions. See 768 F.3d at 866–67. And, as in Ollier, the fact that many of the class members were not the direct targets of the alleged retaliation would not necessarily be a bar to classwide relief. Id. at 868. 26 A. B. V. HAWAII STATE DEP’T OF EDUC. It follows from these conclusions that the district court abused its discretion in holding that Plaintiffs had not established commonality and typicality as to their retaliation claim. Given that the retaliation claims of both the named Plaintiffs and the class members would rest on the underlying motivation for the Department’s alleged retaliatory actions in response to receiving Title IX complaints, that issue of retaliatory motive raises a common question whose answer will “resolve an issue that is central to the validity of each one of the claims in one stroke.” WalMart, 564 U.S. at 350. That is sufficient to satisfy Rule 23(a)(2). For similar reasons, the district court erred in concluding, in effect, that the direct victims of unlawful retaliation have claims that are atypical of the claims of the indirect victims. Plaintiffs’ retaliation claim is not premised solely on the injury of threatening to cancel Campbell’s girls’ water polo program and make the water polo team needlessly resubmit program paperwork. Instead, it is also premised on the “chilling effect” felt by female athletes throughout the high school. And where, as claimed here, the persons who raised broader concerns about Title IX compliance were met with a retaliatory response that likewise impacted female student athletes generally, the indirect victims’ claims depend critically upon the success of the direct victims’ claims. As a result, there is little prospect that the named plaintiffs’ claims could be said to be burdened with defenses or issues unique to them and distinct from the other class members. See Hanon, 976 F.2d at 508. Plaintiffs thus established typicality under Rule 23(a)(3).