“Confirmed Judges, Confirmed Fears” is a blog series documenting the harmful impact of President Trump’s judges on Americans’ rights and liberties. It includes judges nominated in both his first and second terms.
All six Trump judges on the Sixth Circuit joined in a 9-7 opinion of the full court that reversed a district court and vacated a class certification order in a case complaining about serious defects in General Motors (GM) automatic transmissions in cars and trucks. The Trump judges included Thapar, Bush, Larsen, Nalbandian, Readler and Murphy. Seven judges dissented and would have allowed the class action to go forward in the June 2025 decision in Speerly v General Motors LLC.
What happened in this case?
A group of GM purchasers filed a class action against GM concerning defects they contended were in the transmissions of GM cars and trucks made between 2015 and 2018. The defects caused economic harm to all purchasers, and also raised safety and other concerns. Analysis indicated that the problems affected over 800,000 owners in 26 states,
The class action was filed before experienced judge David Lawson in federal district court in Michigan, who was nominated by President Clinton. Lawson undertook preliminary proceedings, carefully analyzed the case, and certified it as a class action with 26 state sub-classes. The people in each sub-class brought breach of warranty, fraud, and product defect claims under the law of each state, with common questions concerning the defects.
GM opposed the certification of the class and sub-classes, and brought the issue to the Sixth Circuit court of appeals. The full court of appeals, including 16 judges, considered the issue.
How did the Trump judges and the rest of the Sixth Circuit majority rule and why is the result harmful?
The Trump judges joined a 9-7 ruling by Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton that granted GM’s request to decertify the class action against it. Sutton maintained that the subclasses
did not meet the “rigorous requirements” for “handling all of these cases in one district court.” In particular, the majority held that the plaintiffs had not properly shown that the case complied with Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure governing class actions because they did not identify at least one “common question of law or fact” and did not demonstrate that such common questions “predominated over individual ones.”
Judge Karen Nelson Moore strongly dissented for seven judges, contending that the majority was seeking to “erect insurmountable barriers to certification” of class actions “against national manufacturers.” She wrote that the majority opinion “misinterprets binding Supreme Court precedent” that limits review of class certification orders to determining whether the district court has committed an “abuse of discretion.” Instead, she went on, the majority has “sanctioned a roving mandate” allowing appellate courts to vacate class certification orders “simply because they would have decided otherwise.”
Based on a detailed analysis of the record, Moore found that the district court “did not abuse its discretion” when it found that “common questions predominated over individualized issues” with respect to the consumers’ warranty, fraud and other claims, so that class certification was proper. On the other hand, she wrote, the majority opinion renders many class action claims involving people with individually small but complex injuries “practically toothless” and “allows manufacturers to place dangerous and defective products into the stream of commerce without fear that the everyday consumer” will have an effective remedy. In addition, this case illustrates the importance of our federal courts to health, welfare and justice and the significance of having fair-minded judges on the federal bench.