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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   32496 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

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Trump's executive order purporting to deny United States Citizens their birthright citizenship is, yet again, enjoined nationwide. Judge Joseph Laplante issued an order certifying a nationwide class under FRCP 23(b)(2) and enjoining enforcement of the executive order as to that class.

The nationwide class consists of:

All current and future persons who are born on or after February 20, 2025, where (1) that person’s mother was unlawfully present in the United States and the person’s father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth, or (2) that person’s mother’s presence in the United States was lawful but temporary, and the person’s father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth.

Essentially, every child who would be denied citizenship by the executive order. Notably the plaintiffs in this case asked parents be included in the class but the judge found that would create issues of commonality. All the children share the same facts and harm (exclusion from United States citizenship) but the way that harm manifests to parents may be diverse. Also answers some questions I had about whether class litigation can include future class members (it can).

This is probably going to be the template for nationwide relief post-CASA.

I'm not a lawyer, but I'm interested in the fact that the judge has defined a class where, due to the linear nature of time, the majority of the members of the class do not actually exist.

Is there any historic precedent for that kind of class? It seems like there's an issue if standing if you don't exist yet. Is this some sort of legal fiction, like when the government sues a barrel of vinegar?

Ah, I actually practice this kind of law so I can help you out here (not class actions, but mass torts generally). The question isn't so much whether someone who isn't born yet can be a member of a class; it's the more general question as to whether someone who isn't a member of the class at the time of certification can become one at a later date. And the answer is yes, and it's not controversial, although there are some practical effects that make judges less likely to condone this sort of thing in the modern view, though those concerns don't apply here.

Consider a products liability case. ABC Corp. sells a product with a design defect that has the potential to injure people who use it. A bunch of people are injured and a class action is filed. But most people who use the product haven't been injured. If they were to become injured at a later date they would become part of the class, and the court may require the company to put up settlement money in a trust fund to pay damages to people who are injured years or even decades after the case has resolved. This is especially true in toxic tort cases involving hazardous chemicals, where people can develop diseases years or even decades after exposure.

The reason modern courts are moving away from this is because class actions have to give an option to opt-out and pursue an individual claim, but people without standing to sue in the first place are unable to do this (you can't opt out of a claim you don't have). So when they got injured at a later date they would automatically be subject to a class action award that may be getting pennies on the dollar from a trust fund. For example, the Owens Corning Fibreboard Trust pays 3.7% of the gross scheduled value of asbestos claims. And the gross scheduled value isn't what you'd actually get in a real lawsuit, but what value was assigned by the court at the time of settlement, based on the value of cases settled at the time. Fibreboard created the global settlement fund in 1993, at which time they were paying $126,000 on average to settle claims, so a trust claim will get you about $5,000. For a mesothelioma case that would get millions if it went to verdict. This luckily isn't an issue in asbestos cases, where there are plenty of other defendants to sue, but it would be a problem if the entire case was against one company.

I appreciate the breakdown from both you and @ToaKraka

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