House v NCAA - An analogy to help explain the injunctive relief class conflicts.
Imagine some lawyers figure out there is a way to file class action lawsuit to get money for Wal-Mart employees. They search for and find a Wal-Mart employee to represent the class and they file a lawsuit on behalf of all Wal-Mart employees.
The lawyers and Wal-Mart agree to settle the class action and allocate more money to Wal-Mart employees.
They send a class action Notice to all Wal-Mart employees which tells them the good news, "Wal-Mart will pay more money to employees!"
The employees don't need to opt-in. They can't opt-out. They can object if they want, but why?. And they will be forced to release Wal-Mart for any past, present or future claims.
Then, only after the terms of settlement are made more public does the following become clear: only 20% of the the class members will get more money, 80% will get nothing, and worse, 10% of the class members will be fired to help pay for the 20%.
To be sure, Wal-Mart can make those types of tradeoffs and decisions in the normal course of business. But, in a class action, that type of tradeoff, and actual harm, to a subset of class members cannot happen. The 10% cannot be fired and sacrificed to pay more to the 20%. The class members have equal rights. Obviously, no judge would conclude that settlement meets the legal standard of "fair" to all class members.
That is what is happening in the House v NCAA case. The judge has recognized that there is a subset of class members being harmed by the terms of the settlement. She knows she cannot approve the settlement until the Parties agree to protect them. Granting grandfather protection from roster cuts related to the terms of the settlement is necessary, not optional. The lawyers for the Parties have proposed a plan that makes grandfather protection optional.
No judge can conclude that giving defendants the option to harm class members meets the legal standard of "fair".