## Facts

- A national women’s rights organization and two abortion clinics brought a civil action alleging a coordinated nationwide effort to shut down or interfere with abortion providers.
- Defendants were anti-abortion activists and organizations alleged to have planned and executed clinic blockades, invasions, threats, and violence.
- After earlier appellate proceedings, the case proceeded as a civil RICO action alleging a pattern of racketeering activity, including extortion-based predicates.
- Plaintiffs moved to certify two nationwide classes under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23:
  - A clinic class of women’s health centers where abortions were performed and allegedly targeted.
  - A women’s class of women who obtained or might obtain abortion-related services at such centers and whose access allegedly was affected.
- Defendants opposed certification, arguing lack of typicality, commonality, and adequacy, and contending that individualized questions would predominate, particularly for the women’s class.

## Issues

1. Whether the proposed clinic class satisfied Rule 23(a) and could be certified under Rule 23(b), given variations in incidents, timing, and location among clinics.
2. Whether the proposed women’s class satisfied Rule 23(a) and Rule 23(b), considering identification of class members, individualized injury and causation issues, and manageability of nationwide treatment.
3. Whether the federal RICO questions presented sufficiently common, class-wide issues to justify nationwide class treatment notwithstanding potential state-law predicate and choice-of-law concerns.

## Decision

- The court certified a nationwide clinic class, finding Rule 23(a) satisfied and concluding that common liability questions under civil RICO predominated over clinic-specific issues.
- The court permitted only a more limited women’s class, structured primarily around injunctive/declaratory relief and narrowed to tie members’ claims closely to clinic-access effects of the alleged conduct.
- The court rejected, in substantial part, manageability objections based on nationwide scope, emphasizing the central role of federal RICO issues.

## Legal Principles

- Rule 23(a) commonality may be met where plaintiffs allege a centrally coordinated, nationwide scheme such that core questions (enterprise, pattern, conspiracy, and participation) are common across the class.
- Typicality does not require identical events; it is satisfied where representatives’ injuries flow from the same alleged course of conduct and legal theory as the class claims.
- Adequacy requires absence of fundamental conflicts; differing organizational aims or litigation emphases do not defeat adequacy without a material divergence of interests.
- For Rule 23(b)(3), predominance can be satisfied when common liability questions drive the case, even if damages and some causation facts are individualized and can be managed separately.
- Rule 23(b)(2) treatment is more appropriate where the primary relief sought is injunctive/declaratory and addresses class members in a generally uniform manner; individualized damages and causation concerns weigh against (b)(3) certification for dispersed individuals.
- Nationwide class certification is more manageable where claims arise under a single federal statute, and the presence of state-law concepts as RICO predicates does not necessarily defeat predominance.

## Conclusion

The court allowed the civil RICO case to proceed on a nationwide class basis by certifying a clinic class under Rule 23(b)(3) and permitting only a narrowed women’s class largely oriented toward injunctive relief, reasoning that common RICO liability questions were central for clinics while individualized issues posed greater barriers for a broad damages-oriented women’s class.


Nat'l Org. for Women, Inc. v. Scheidler, 172 F.R.D. 351 (N.D. Ill. 1997)