Opinion ID: 721440
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Propriety of Class Certification

Text: 14 Our most recent (1994) opinion dealt at length with the question of class certification in this case, analyzing in considerable detail the Supreme Court's exposition in General Tel. Co. v. Falcon, 457 U.S. 147, 102 S.Ct. 2364, 72 L.Ed.2d 740 (1982), of the commonality requirement in discrimination class actions. See 19 F.3d at 1469-70. We observed that the principal problem with certification in this case was that the class encompasses both civil service and foreign service applicants to the USIA, despite the fact that the two categories are hired under different personnel systems. Id. at 1471. Although the latest district court opinion understandably spent considerable time showing that the claimed discriminatory practices cut across both civil and foreign service categories, see, e.g., 158 F.R.D. at 536-37, 541, 546, the USIA has not, so far as class certification is concerned, addressed the civil service/foreign service difficulty at all on this appeal. So that issue is out of the case. 15 There remains the general question whether plaintiffs showed sufficient commonality and typicality among the members of the plaintiff class. Under our prior instructions, the district court--as we noted above--identified four practices evidencing a common policy of discrimination that largely cut across job categories. 158 F.R.D. at 539. The defendant argues that these supposed practices amount simply to anecdotal evidence of subjective discrimination. We need not resolve that claim, however, for even if we resolved it in the defendant's favor we would not find an abuse of discretion in the class certification. Wagner v. Taylor, 836 F.2d 566, 578 (D.C.Cir.1987) (reviewing for abuse of discretion). In our most recent pass at this case, we hesitated to suggest that the certification finding might be based on statistical evidence alone. Hartman, 19 F.3d at 1474. We expressed concern that some of the statistical evidence might have been premised on the (improper) class certification, id., a concern that appears to have been significantly driven by the plaintiffs' blurring of lines between the civil service and the foreign service. But with that issue completely out of the case, and with the defendant making no argument as to why the statistical evidence would not have been admissible in trials of individual cases brought on behalf of any particular class member, the case no longer appears to present any reason for that concern. Accordingly, we find no properly preserved error in the class certification.