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n the legal sense, a putative class refers to a group of individuals who are proposed to be part of a class action lawsuit but have not yet been officially certified as a class by the court. The term "putative" means "alleged" or "supposed," so a putative class is the group that the plaintiff claims shares common legal or factual issues, making them eligible to be represented together in a class action.
For example, in a lawsuit against a company for defective products, the plaintiff might identify a putative class of "all customers who purchased the defective product between 2020 and 2025." The court must then decide if this group meets the requirements for class certification (like commonality, numerosity, and typicality) under rules like Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in the U.S. Until certification, the group remains a "putative class."