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Text: Against that conclusion, respondents argue that their claims for backpay were appropriately certified as part of a class under Rule 23(b)(2) because those claims do not “predominate” over their requests for injunctive and de claratory relief. They rely upon the Advisory Committee’s statement that Rule 23(b)(2) “does not extend to cases in which the appropriate final relief relates exclusively or predominantly to money damages.” 39 F. R. D., at 102 (emphasis added). The negative implication, they argue, is that it does extend to cases in which the appropriate final relief relates only partially and nonpredominantly to money damages. Of course it is the Rule itself, not the Advisory Committee’s description of it, that governs. And a mere negative inference does not in our view suffice to establish a disposition that has no basis in the Rule’s text, and that does obvious violence to the Rule’s structural features. The mere “predominance” of a proper (b)(2) injunctive claim does nothing to justify elimination of Rule 23(b)(3)’s procedural protections: It neither establishes the superiority of class adjudication over individual adjudica tion nor cures the notice and opt-out problems. We fail to see why the Rule should be read to nullify these protec tions whenever a plaintiff class, at its option, combines its monetary claims with a request—even a “predominating request”—for an injunction.

Respondents’ predominance test, moreover, creates perverse incentives for class representatives to place at risk potentially valid claims for monetary relief. In this case, for example, the named plaintiffs declined to include employees’ claims for compensatory damages in their complaint. That strategy of including only backpay claims made it more likely that monetary relief would not “pre dominate.” But it also created the possibility (if the pre dominance test were correct) that individual class mem bers’ compensatory-damages claims would be precluded by litigation they had no power to hold themselves apart from. If it were determined, for example, that a particular class member is not entitled to backpay because her denial of increased pay or a promotion was not the product of discrimination, that employee might be collaterally es topped from independently seeking compensatory dam ages based on that same denial. That possibility under scores the need for plaintiffs with individual monetary claims to decide for themselves whether to tie their fates to the class representatives’ or go it alone—a choice Rule 23(b)(2) does not ensure that they have.

The predominance test would also require the District Court to reevaluate the roster of class members continu ally. The Ninth Circuit recognized the necessity for this when it concluded that those plaintiffs no longer employed by Wal-Mart lack standing to seek injunctive or declara tory relief against its employment practices. The Court of Appeals’ response to that difficulty, however, was not to eliminate all former employees from the certified class, but to eliminate only those who had left the company’s employ by the date the complaint was filed. That solution has no logical connection to the problem, since those who have left their Wal-Mart jobs since the complaint was filed have no more need for prospective relief than those who left beforehand. As a consequence, even though the valid ity of a (b)(2) class depends on whether “final injunctive relief or corresponding declaratory relief is appropriate respecting the class as a whole,” Rule 23(b)(2) (emphasis added), about half the members of the class approved by the Ninth Circuit have no claim for injunctive or declara tory relief at all. Of course, the alternative (and logical) solution of excising plaintiffs from the class as they leave their employment may have struck the Court of Appeals as wasteful of the District Court’s time. Which indeed it is, since if a backpay action were properly certified for class treatment under (b)(3), the ability to litigate a plain tiff ’s backpay claim as part of the class would not turn on the irrelevant question whether she is still employed at Wal-Mart. What follows from this, however, is not that some arbitrary limitation on class membership should be imposed but that the backpay claims should not be certi fied under Rule 23(b)(2) at all.

Finally, respondents argue that their backpay claims are appropriate for a (b)(2) class action because a backpay award is equitable in nature. The latter may be true, but it is irrelevant. The Rule does not speak of “equitable” remedies generally but of injunctions and declaratory judgments. As Title VII itself makes pellucidly clear, backpay is neither. See 42 U. S. C. §2000e–5(g)(2)(B)(i) and (ii) (distinguishing between declaratory and injunc tive relief and the payment of “backpay,” see §2000e– 5(g)(2)(A)).