Standing, standing, and standing

Wilson v. Centene Management addressed the proper standard for determining Article III standing at the class certification stage. The Fifth Circuit held: “The class certification approach evaluates only a named plaintiff’s individual standing. The court’s determination that the named plaintiff demonstrated individual standing concludes the inquiry. Only then should the court ‘address the question whether the named plaintiffs have representative capacity, as defined by Rule 23(a), to assert the rights of others.’”

This approach contrasts with a more searching approach that would compare the injuries of the named plaintiff to those of the putative class and determine whether the named plaintiff’s harms are sufficiently analogous to those suffered by the rest of the class. The Court expressly rejected this approach as it  “prematurely and unnecessarily muddies the waters for the threshold constitutional issue of justiciability.”

The Court cautioned that “where there is ‘substantial overlap between’ standing and the merits of a plaintiff’s claim, ‘the better course’ is to treat the attack on standing ‘as an attack on the merits— and therefore outside the scope of our Rule 23(f) review of class certification decisions—rather than as a question of standing.’” No. 24-50044, July 17, 2025