The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly emphasized that class actions are essential to ensuring justice, especially when corporations take small amounts of money from large numbers of people. If a company, for example, cheats 17 million people out of $30 each, a class action is the only way to protect consumers and hold it accountable. Judges across the ideological spectrum understand this. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote this June in Rent-A-Center v. Jackson, quoting Judge Richard Posner, "The realistic alternative to a class action is not 17 million individual suits, but zero individual suits, as only a lunatic or a fanatic sues for $30."
Now, in precisely such a case — a class action charging AT&T with cheating Vincent and Liza Concepcion out of $30.22 (and thousands of similar sums for cellphones it said would be free) — the phone company is asking the Supreme Court to let it wipe out class actions. The company is dialing a wrong number.
