DEMETRIUS ROSS, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. GREG GOSSETT, et al., Defendants-Appellants.
No. 20-1992
United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit
DECIDED MAY 5, 2022
ARGUED APRIL 1, 2021
ROVNER, Circuit Judge. The plaintiffs in this case are all inmates who were housed by the Illinois Department of Corrections (the “IDOC“) at the Illinois River, Big Muddy River, or Menard correctional centers during the period from April 2014 through July 2014. They alleged that the prison-wide shakedowns conducted by the defendants violated their constitutional and statutory rights. Their second amended complaint, which is the operative one here, was brought under
The district court consolidated a number of cases into this case, and the plaintiffs sought class certification, seeking to certify a class of inmates incarcerated in 2014 at: Menard from April 4-16, Illinois River from April 21-29, Big Muddy from May 12-19, and Lawrence from July 7-11. They sought certification only for claims against a discrete subset of the hundreds of defendants in this case, encompassing only the 22 defendants who were involved in supervisory roles for the shakedowns. The district court granted the proposed class certification, and the appellants now challenge that decision on appeal.
We review a district court‘s class certification determination only for abuse of discretion. Gorss Motels, Inc. v. Brigadoon Fitness, Inc., 29 F.4th 839, 843 (7th Cir. 2022); Bell v. PNC Bank, Nat‘l Ass‘n, 800 F.3d 360, 373 (7th Cir. 2015). In determining whether the court abused its discretion, we consider whether the court misunderstood the applicable law or made clear errors of fact. Id.
We begin, then, with the facts as set forth by the district court in its determination. See Dist. Ct. Order at 1-4. In 2014, the IDOC‘s Chief of Operations, Joseph Yurkovich, and Deputy Chief of Operations, Michael Atchison, decided to execute prison-wide shakedowns for purposes of sanitation and to discover and remove contraband. Toward that end, they formed tactical teams supervised by senior IDOC officials, including head administrators from each of the prisons. They discussed the plan with the Statewide Tactical Commander, David White, and the Southern Regional Commander, Timothy McAllister, who created operations orders outlining the shakedown schedule and staffing needs.
Prior to the shakedown at each prison, White and/or McAllister discussed the actual operation of the shakedown with the prison warden and tactical commanders, and conducted three separate briefings. First, they would discuss the plan with tactical team commanders, wardens, and assistant wardens, including specific details as to how duties would be performed, what inmates would wear, and how inmates would be handcuffed, as well as discussing how tactical team members would conduct themselves and handle inmates. Next, the tactical team commanders and the assistant commanders discussed the shakedown plan with the members of the tactical team. Finally, the entire group would come together and discuss the plan, including the wardens, and McAllister or White.
That coordinated execution extended to the uniforms for the tactical team, and the sequence of events for the shakedown. Tactical team officers wore uniforms which contained no identifying insignia or name badges, thus making
The shakedown itself proceeded in a deliberate, preordained manner, from the entry of the officers into the cell units all the way to the return of the inmates to their cells. The plaintiffs and defendants both agree that the shakedowns occurred and were executed according to a uniform plan under their supervision. They diverge, however, in the description of that plan.
As the court recognized, the plaintiffs describe the following sequence of events in the shakedowns. First, tactical team officers would enter the living units in a cacophonous manner, yelling loudly and banging their batons on the bars and railings of the unit. The tactical officers would then instruct inmates to strip and remove their clothing, and would order a “reverse” strip search, in which inmates would be required to manipulate their genitals and buttocks and then to put their hands into their mouths—a strip search sequence which the plaintiffs describe as demeaning and unsanitary.
Inmates were then commanded to put on a shirt, pants, and shoes, but were not allowed to don underwear. They were handcuffed in a position that is particularly painful and uncomfortable, in which their hands were behind their backs with their thumbs up and palms facing out. They were then marched to a holding area in a “nuts to butts” fashion, in which the genitals of inmates would come into contact with the backside of the inmate in front of them. They maintain that the tactical team members routinely pushed and shoved
II.
Pursuant to
A.
As both the district court and the appellants recognize, in order to satisfy commonality, the plaintiffs’ claim must “depend on a common contention” and “[t]hat common
The appellants argue that Wal-Mart requires a different result. They contend that the plaintiffs may be able to establish commonality by showing the existence of an unconstitutional policy, but that under the reasoning in Wal-Mart the plaintiffs need to present “significant proof” of that policy, including its unconstitutional aspects, at the class certification stage. They assert that the plaintiffs failed to present significant proof that “the policy existed as plaintiffs claimed it did.” The proof required by the appellants was not that a common policy and plan existed—they concede it did—but that the policy which existed was the one alleged by the plaintiffs with its unconstitutional provisions rather than the one alleged by them. The district court properly rejected that argument, recognizing that the analysis sought by the appellants is appropriate in an examination of the merits, but is not the proper focus in a class certification determination.
Wal-Mart itself is instructive as to that distinction. In that case, the plaintiffs, current and former female employees of Wal-Mart, alleged that the discretion exercised by their local supervisors over pay and promotion matters violated Title VII by discriminating against women. Id. at 342. In contrast to the present case, in Wal-Mart it was uncontested that there was no written or explicit corporate policy against the advancement of women. In fact, the existence of any uniform policy was itself contested. The Court described the basic theory of the plaintiffs’ case as “that a strong and uniform ‘corporate culture’ permits bias against women to infect, perhaps subconsciously, the discretionary decisionmaking of each one of Wal-Mart‘s thousands of managers—thereby making
In contrast, the evidence that was lacking in Wal-Mart—that the alleged discriminatory actions were undertaken pursuant to a uniform policy—is not only present in this case, it is undisputed. The appellants concede that the shakedowns were conducted according to a uniform plan created and implemented by the appellants, and that the plan was executed in a uniform manner under their supervision. There is no need for the plaintiffs to provide “significant proof” of the existence of a uniform policy precisely because its existence is conceded. The only dispute is the content of that uniform policy—specifically, whether that uniform policy reflected the version alleged by the plaintiffs or the one alleged by the defendants. That is a merits question, however. Either way, the
B.
That leaves the remaining challenge by the appellants, which is to the district court‘s determination that the predominance factor was met. One of the provisions of Rule 23(b) must be satisfied in order to maintain a class action, and the district court held that Rule 23(b)(3) had been met. See
The Rule 23(b)(3) standard “requires a showing that questions common to the class predominate, not that those questions will be answered, on the merits, in favor of the class.” Amgen Inc. v. Connecticut Ret. Plans & Tr. Funds, 568 U.S. 455, 459 (2013); see also Gorss Motels, 29 F.4th at 845 (“it is the method of determining the answer and not the answer itself that drives the predominance consideration“). As the district court recognized, the predominance requirement is met “when common questions represent a significant aspect of a case and can be resolved for all members of a class in a single adjudication.” Dist. Ct. Order at 10; Gorss Motels, 29 F.4th at 844. “An individual question is one where members of a proposed class will need to present evidence that varies from member to member; a common question is one where the same evidence will suffice for each member to make a prima facie showing or the issue is susceptible to generalized, class-wide proof.” Gorss Motels, 29 F.4th at 843-44; Tyson Foods, Inc. v. Bouaphakeo, 577 U.S. 442, 453 (2016).
Citing numerous cases, the district court recognized that courts routinely have found that common questions predominate where the case claims the existence of a widespread or uniform practice. Dist. Ct. Order at 11. The court held that the issues as to liability are common and predominate in this case, and that any variation in the particular experiences of class members would primarily impact the type and amount of recoverable damages, and would not defeat predominance. Id. at 11-12, citing Tyson Foods, 577 U.S. at 453 (“[w]hen one or more of the central issues in the action are common to the class and can be said to predominate, the action may be
The appellants argue that the predominance requirement is not met because individual issues would dominate and would require thousands of mini-trials in order to determine which component of the policy each inmate was subjected to. They further assert that supervisor liability cannot be found unless the supervisor, with knowledge of the subordinate‘s conduct, approves the conduct, and therefore that supervisor liability claims are less appropriate for class-wide resolution. Both of these arguments, however, stem from the same misunderstanding of the issues presented in the claims of the putative class against these 22 defendants. The plaintiffs did not seek class status as to each and every defendant involved in the shakedown. The proposed class in this case relates only to the claims against the 22 supervisors responsible for the creation and implementation of the uniform shakedown plan, and the allegations are that the plan itself utilized measures designed to inflict pain or humiliation with no penological purpose, and therefore that the defendants violated the Eighth Amendment in their actions in imposing those conditions on the inmates. The defendants have maintained throughout this action that the shakedown plan was imposed in the same
In its memorandum in opposition to the motion for class certification in the district court, the appellants set forth the three constitutional claims common to each putative class member alleged by the plaintiffs as follows: “(1) Defendants designed and implemented procedures to be followed during all four shakedowns that were abusive and humiliating, rather than in furtherance of any proper penological purpose, in violation of the Plaintiffs’ Eighth Amendment rights, (2) Defendants reached an agreement to deprive the class of their constitutional rights and to protect one another from liability for that deprivation, and (3) Defendants knew that the class‘s Eighth Amendment rights were about to be violated and failed to intervene to prevent the constitutional violation. Doc. 491 at 14. Nothing in those allegations requires mini-trials, let alone thousands of them.
The focus of each claim is on the requirements of the uniform plan that was used in the shakedowns, and the dispute at trial is between the two parties’ different versions of the shakedown plan. We recognized in Gorss that similar claims of uniform behavior, such as those involving a uniform form or standardized agreement, are the type of claims that are amenable to class-wide proof and therefore capable of
For that reason, the appellants’ argument that supervisory liability cases are poorly suited to classwide resolution is similarly flawed. The appellants argue that supervisor liability is especially inappropriate where the evidence shows at worst that non-supervisory defendants departed from the policy set by the supervisors, because of the need for individualized evidence of the supervisor‘s knowledge and approval of the non-supervisor‘s actions. But that is the opposite of the allegations here. The class action against the supervisors here is decidedly not based on aberrant actions by rogue non-supervisors. It is premised entirely on the constitutionality of the procedures that were part of the plan designed and implemented by the supervisors, which allegedly were planned to cause pain or humiliation with no penological justification. Therefore, the argument as to the need for individual evidence for supervisor liability is inconsistent with the claims asserted here (and in any case was not itself raised in the district court.) The type of failure-to-intervene claims that would render supervisor liability dependent on individual facts are not present here, and the mere possibility of other legal theories or individual cases is insufficient to defeat predominance.
Even as to damages, the issue would be which of the unconstitutional actions the inmate experienced, but given the agreement that the shakedowns were carried out pursuant to
Finally, with respect to predominance, the appellants argue that the district court failed to engage in the proper inquiry in that the court did not discuss the elements of the claims and apply the inquiry to those elements. See Santiago v. City of Chicago, 19 F.4th 1010 (7th Cir. 2021). But the district court in fact addressed the only arguments they made in the district court as to the elements of the claims. In the district court, they argued that predominance requires an examination of the substantive elements of the claims, and that the differing testimony of the putative class members and the plaintiffs dissolved their claim as to the substance of the uniform practice. They then argued that without that uniform practice
As we have repeatedly emphasized, however, the class certification analysis is not an examination of the merits:
“‘a court weighing class certification must walk a balance between evaluating evidence to determine whether a common question exists and predominates, without weighing that evidence to determine whether the plaintiff class will ultimately prevail on the merits.’ Bell v. PNC Bank, N.A., 800 F.3d 360, 377 (7th Cir. 2015) (emphases added). We recognize the contradiction built into the standard. The judge must examine the evidence for its cohesiveness while studiously ignoring its bearing on merits questions[.]”
Accordingly, the decision of the district court is AFFIRMED.