A judge has officially certified a class action lawsuit against Apple over its controversial butterfly keyboard design that plagued the MacBook lineup for years. As reported by the Verge, the lawsuit covers all of the MacBook models that feature a butterfly keyboard.
The butterfly keyboard has gone down in infamy since the first version was introduced with the 12-inch MacBook in 2015 and came to the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. This lawsuit was first filed back in 2018, and it will now move forward as a certified class action suit.
As today’s report explains, the lawsuit was certified by Judge Edward Davila on March 8 in California, but it was only unsealed until late last week. As of right now, the class action lawsuit covers people who bought a MacBook with a butterfly keyboard in seven states: California, New York, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, and Washington.
The lawsuit specifies that the affected MacBook models include the 12-inch MacBook (purchased between 2015 and 2017), the MacBook Pro (between 2016 and 2019), and the MacBook Air (between 2018 and 2019).
The class claims that Apple knew the butterfly keyboard was defective, and it even cites internal communication between Apple executives in which one said that “no matter how much lipstick you try to put on this pig, it’s still ugly,” referring to the butterfly keyboard.
Apple had argued that this lawsuit should not be certified as class action because it covers multiple different variations of the butterfly keyboard design. The plaintiffs were eventually successful in their argument that the same fundamental design problems affect all variations of the butterfly keyboard design:
The law firm behind the suit is inviting anyone from around the United States to join the class, though they are not yet seeking nationwide certification for the lawsuit.
None of the design differences that Apple points to changed the tight spaces between the keys, nor the low-travel aspect of the design,” the order reads. Apple will have to argue later, in court, that these basic features didn’t actually make the design unreliable — and that it didn’t spend years knowingly making defective keyboards.
