Whether a state-run child-welfare system can be challenged as a class action based on alleged 'systemwide failures'

QUESTIONS PRESENTED In Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 564 U.S. 338 (2011), this Court held that a class action may not be certified unless a question central to each class member’s claim is capable of being resolved “in one stroke” for the entire class. Id. at 350. The Court also held that Rule 23(b)(2) injunctive classes are appropriate only if and to the extent “a single injunction or declaratory judgment [c]ould provide relief to each member of the class.” Id. at 360. In this case, plaintiffs sought to amalgamate various alleged “failures” of the Arizona child-welfare system that they claim constitute substantive due _ process violations and litigate them all as a class action on behalf of every child in the system. The class includes children with intensive health needs, and others who are healthy; children in group homes, and others in foster or kinship homes; children alleged to have received inadequate care, and others well served. Indeed, it includes members who have no injury at all. The Ninth Circuit nonetheless held that Rule 23 was satisfied. The questions presented are: 1. Whether a putative class may satisfy the commonality requirement of Rule 23(a)(2) by alleging that a state-run system suffers from “systemwide failures” to which every class member is “exposed” simply by virtue of being in the system. 2. Whether a putative class may invoke Rule 23(b)(2) to challenge alleged “systemwide failures” to which every class member is “exposed” when the class members have not suffered a common injury that could be uniformly remedied by a single injunction. ii STATEMENT OF