Reversing a lower court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has vacated the settlement in a discrimination class action against the social media dating app Tinder, determining that the class’s representative had a strong interest in settling her claim because she had “no chance of going to trial” and failed to conduct “extensive discovery” related to the case.
On Tuesday, the federal appeals court unanimously reversed the district court’s revised class action settlement and held that plaintiff Lisa Kim was an inadequate class representative. Kim filed suit against Tinder in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in April 2018 with claims that the online dating application violated the state’s Unruh Act and unfair competition law based on the company’s two-tiered pricing model reliant on the users’ age.
