On April 15, 2015, in Melendres v. Arpaio, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit adopted a class certification approach for determining whether the proper party is before the court in a class action (Nos. 13-16285 and 13-17238, (9th Cir. Apr. 15, 2015)).

The plaintiffs brought a class action for declaratory and injunctive relief against the defendants, Sheriff Joseph Arpaio and the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office in Arizona. The plaintiffs alleged that the defendants had a custom, policy and practice of racially profiling Latino drivers and passengers, and of stopping them pretextually under the auspices of enforcing state and federal immigration-related laws. The plaintiffs further alleged that the defendants implemented the policy primarily during "saturation patrols" in which the defendant officers would "saturate" a particular area and look for violations of immigration laws. Each of the named plaintiffs, except for two individuals, were stopped during a saturation patrol.

The US District Court for the District of Arizona ultimately certified a class of all Latinos who, since January 2007, had been or will be stopped, detained, questioned or searched by the defendants' agents while driving or sitting in a vehicle in Maricopa County, Arizona during saturation patrols and non-saturation patrols.

After a bench trial, the district court concluded that the defendants' policies for both saturation and non-saturation patrol activities were unconstitutional. As a result, the district court issued a permanent injunction against the defendants.

On appeal, the defendants argued, among other things, that because only two of the named plaintiffs were stopped outside of a saturation patrol, and none of the evidence presented a constitutional violation as to that stop, no plaintiff had standing to assert claims related to stops outside saturation patrols. The Ninth Circuit disagreed and held that the district court did not err in finding that the named plaintiffs had standing to assert the claims of absent class members stopped during non-saturation patrols.

The Ninth Circuit discussed two approaches for determining whether the proper party is before the court in a class action, including the:

The Ninth Circuit adopted the class certification approach. The appellate court found that this approach has been embraced by the US Supreme Court (though not always) and is the one adopted by most other federal courts to address the issue.

Under the class certification approach, the court found that all the named plaintiffs, including the two named plaintiffs stopped outside the saturation patrol, had individual standing to bring their own claims. The Ninth Circuit found that the defendants' argument raised the question of class certification, in particular whether the named plaintiffs were adequate representatives of the unnamed plaintiffs' claims. The appellate court held that the named plaintiffs were adequate representatives because their claims did not implicate a significantly different set of concerns than the unnamed plaintiffs' claims.