The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Thursday vacated the class certification of Black Lives Matter protesters in their 2020 complaint against the city of Los Angeles for alleged use of excessive force. The appeals court remanded the case back to the trial court to reassess class certification, thus extending another opportunity for the Black Lives Matter Los Angeles chapter to sue as a group.
Judge Kenneth K. Lee, writing for the court, asserted that the lower court failed to “rigorously analyze” whether the protesters’ claims were sufficiently similar to warrant a class action. He noted that the lower court did not sufficiently address how the certified damages classes could comprehensively tackle all claims, especially given the individualized nature of each plaintiff’s experiences during the protests. The judge highlighted that a class-wide question regarding whether police used undue force is not “amenable to class treatment because the answer in this case depends on what force was used, what a particular class member was doing, what other protestors may have been doing, what the officers objectively observed, and a host of other factors.”
Judge Lee additionally pointed out that the injunctive relief class could encompass thousands of protesters, ranging from those who were not arrested to those charged with felonies. The ruling instructs the lower court to determine whether any issues can be resolved with classwide evidence and to specify which particular questions the plaintiffs can address collectively.
In 2022, the US District Court for the Central District of California certified four classes in the Black Lives Matter lawsuit: one addressing alleged police violence, another concerning unlawful arrests, a third disputing infraction charges, and a fourth seeking to halt certain police practices like failing to warn demonstrators before arrests. The city of Los Angeles appealed these certifications to the Ninth Circuit.
The 2020 complaint by Black Lives Matter Los Angeles accused Los Angeles police of excessive force against protesters, with allegations including unlawful arrests, the use of rubber bullets, and physical beatings with batons during marches organized in response to the death of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.
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