A federal judge in Chicago has denied class certification in an antitrust lawsuit brought by former employees of SCA Health, DaVita and United Surgical Partners International alleging a no-poach agreement suppressed wages among senior outpatient clinic employees, according to a June 10 ruling.
The court found that the proposed class of director-level and above employees was too diverse — with different titles, skills, specialties and geographic locations — to show that common questions of wage suppression would predominate over individualized issues, as required under federal class action rules.
The court also found the plaintiffs’ regression analysis inadmissible as an unreliable method for proving classwide impact. The case was originally filed in 2021.
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