Jocelyn D. Larkin
Today, the US Supreme Court issued its long-anticipated decision in Tyson Foods Inc. v. Bouaphakeo et al, and it is very good for plaintiffs. The court finds that representative or statistical proof is just like other evidence: “Whether a representative sample may be used to establish classwide liability will depend on the purpose for which the sample is being introduced and on the underlying cause of action.”
The specifics of the case are that workers alleged that Tyson – a $38 billion company – failed to pay proper wages for certain pre- and post-shift activities, including putting on and taking off protective equipment and carrying items to the production floor. The decision affirms that Tyson was liable through individual timesheets kept by the company, as well as expert testimony regarding the time it took to complete the tasks in question.
The decision puts the nail in the coffin of two favorite defense bar mantras: 1) no Trial by Formula (Wal-Mart); and 2) common methodology for proving damages required at class cert (Comcast).
The Court unanimously declined to consider the second issue on which certiorari was granted – whether a class can be certified that includes uninjured class members – after the petitioner abandoned its position in its merits briefing. While the majority and the dissent both suggest that the question will be addressed in the future, they frame the question differently.
The majority posits that the question is “whether uninjured class members may recover” while the dissent says the issue is “whether a class action can be maintained if a class contained uninjured members.” This is significant because “culling out” uninjured class members at or after trial is far different than making an inappropriate merits determination at the class certification stage.
This is the second class action decision this term where Justice Kennedy has joined the liberals in a narrow but plaintiff favorable ruling. (Campbell-Ewald was the other.)
The Impact Fund and the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF) recently filed their second amicus brief in connection with Kirola v. City and County of San Francisco.
This most recent amicus brief supported Ms. Kirola and the class in protecting the district court’s systemic injunction and pushing back on the City’s belated arguments attacking the fundamental enforceability of the ADA’s requirements for physical and architectural access.
Earlier this year, transgender youth and their families in the San Diego, California area filed a putative class action lawsuit against Rady Children’s Health to prevent the hospital system from unlawfully cutting off medically necessary treatment for transgender adolescents and young adults. Impact Fund, Western Center on Law & Poverty, and the National Center for LGBTQ Rights represent the plaintiffs.
In January 2026, Rady announced it would no longer provide gender-affirming medications and procedures. Rady planned to end these services in less than three weeks but did not provide referrals to the nearly 2,000 patients whose care it was cutting off, leaving them scrambling to find essential medical care overnight.
Spanish speakers should receive notices that they understand. Making sure those notices are clear and accurate in Spanish is a small but real part of making the legal process work for the people it's supposed to serve.
Fernando Flores, a civil rights attorney and partner at Vicuna Flores, generously donated his time to help strengthen our Spanish-language class notices. We sat down with him to talk about what's really at stake when legal notices fail and what it means to fight for someone's dignity inside a system that too often makes them feel invisible.
in Leeper v. Shipt, No. S289305, the California Supreme Court will decide whether employers can force workers to have to go through individual arbitration of PAGA claims before getting to have their day in court, effectively delaying litigation of most PAGA actions by a year and a half or more.
The Supreme Court’s decision could fundamentally alter employers' incentives to comply with labor laws, resulting in wage theft, unsafe workplaces, and other tangible consequences for millions of California workers.
On January 22, 2026, transgender patients of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and their families achieved an important victory to protect their private medical information from unlawful intrusion by the federal government, defeating an administrative subpoena demanding medical records containing information about the identities and private medical records of transgender youth patients.
Earlier this month, the Impact Fund and co-counsel including the ACLU won a court order on behalf of Plaintiff Head Start associations and parents’ groups protecting the Head Start program from attacks by the Trump administration. Head Start provides early education, health services, and family support to more than 800,000 children from low-income families, children with disabilities, children learning English, Native American children, and others. The court’s order blocks the Trump administration from cutting Head Start staff and offices, limiting diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility activities within the program, and putting the program’s federal funding at risk.
In March 2025, a federal district court approved a settlement in a case brought by Impact Fund and cocounsel on behalf of a class of tens of thousands of LGBTQ+ veterans unfairly discharged based on sexual orientation under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” [DADT] and its precursor policies. Now, the expedited remedial procedures provided for in the settlement are operational, and affected veterans can obtain corrections of their discharge papers (DD-214) to remove references to sexual orientation. Those veterans discharged with an “Other than Honorable” or “General” discharge characterization can also opt in to be reviewed for upgrade to “Honorable.”
Rule 23 class actions made headlines earlier this summer with the Supreme Court’s June decision in Trump v. CASA, Inc. The case is substantively about birthright citizenship and the validity of Executive Order No. 14160, which attempts to eliminate birthright citizenship in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, federal statute, and decades of legal precedent.
But the appeal heard by the Supreme Court in May wasn’t about birthright citizenship at all. Instead, it asked whether federal judges were empowered to order defendants to modify or stop unlawful behavior, policies, or practices generally and not just for the parties in the lawsuit. These types of orders are known as national or universal injunctions, even though their scope isn’t necessarily nationwide or universal.
On July 14, 2025, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a new directive that makes immigration status an eligibility requirement for Head Start for the first time in the program’s sixty-year history. On July 21, we filed a motion for a temporary restraining order to stop the Immigrant Exclusion Directive from going into effect.
The Trump Administration estimates that the Immigrant Exclusion Directive excludes at least 500,000 children from Head Start.
In May, a coalition of Head Start associations and parent organizations, represented by the Impact Fund, ACLU, Crowell & Moring LLP, and Feldesman Leifer LLP, filed a motion for a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s attacks on the Head Start program.
The program provides comprehensive early education services to over 800,000 children and families nationwide each year.