Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes
The Supreme Court threw out the largest employment class action ever certified, ruling that 1.5 million female Wal-Mart employees could not sue as a single class because they had not shown a common reason connecting the pay and promotion decisions made by thousands of different local managers.
The Court also held that claims for backpay cannot be certified under the part of class-action rules meant for cases seeking a single companywide order, making it much harder to combine large monetary claims with broad injunctive class actions going forward.
How it got here: A federal trial court certified the massive class; the Ninth Circuit, sitting en banc, substantially affirmed; Wal-Mart asked the Supreme Court to review the certification.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Three current and former female Wal-Mart employees sued the nation's largest private employer, claiming that local managers' broad discretion over pay and promotions favored men and produced companywide gender discrimination. They sought to represent about 1.5 million women who worked at Wal-Mart stores nationwide, seeking injunctive relief, punitive damages, and backpay under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
The question before the Court
Could 1.5 million female Wal-Mart employees sue the company together as one class over pay and promotion decisions made separately by thousands of local managers?
Why it matters
Workers who want to challenge widespread but decentralized discrimination now face a much higher bar to banding together in a single nationwide lawsuit. Companies with large, dispersed workforces gained a significant shield against sprawling class actions, while employees with individual discrimination or backpay claims may need to sue separately or in smaller groups.
What changes now
The Supreme Court's reversal is a final ruling on the merits of the certification question, not a temporary order. The case is not certified as a nationwide class under the rules the plaintiffs used, though individual plaintiffs or smaller, more narrowly defined classes could still pursue claims in the lower courts. Justice Ginsburg's opinion would have allowed the plaintiffs a chance to seek certification under a different, more demanding class-action rule on remand, but the majority did not adopt that approach.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether monetary claims can ever be certified under the injunctive-relief class-action rule, only that individualized claims like backpay cannot be. It also did not rule on whether Wal-Mart actually discriminated against its employees -- only that this particular nationwide class could not be certified as constructed.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent in part — Justice Ginsburg
Justice Ginsburg agreed the backpay claims were wrongly certified under the injunctive-relief rule, but argued the majority wrongly imported the tougher 'predominance' analysis meant for a different class-action rule into the basic commonality requirement. She would have found commonality satisfied by the shared policy of unchecked managerial discretion and remanded to let plaintiffs seek certification under the rule meant for money-damages classes.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court explained that class members must share a common question capable of producing the same answer for everyone in the class -- not just a shared legal claim -- meaning there must be a single common contention whose truth or falsity resolves an issue central to every claim at once.
- Because Title VII cases turn on the specific reason behind each individual employment decision, and the plaintiffs were challenging millions of separate pay and promotion decisions made by different managers, the Court looked for something tying all those decisions together, such as company-wide direction or a biased testing method.
- Applying the framework from a 1982 case, General Telephone Co. of Southwest v. Falcon, the Court said plaintiffs needed 'significant proof' that Wal-Mart operated under a general policy of discrimination, since there was no company-wide test or formula that could be shown to be biased.
- The Court found the plaintiffs' sociological testimony, statistical regressions, and roughly 120 anecdotes insufficient, because the expert could not estimate how often stereotyping affected decisions and the anecdotes covered only a tiny fraction of Wal-Mart's stores and employees.
- The Court then turned to the backpay claims and held that the class-action rule the plaintiffs relied on -- which is meant for cases where a single injunction or declaration would resolve everyone's claim at once -- cannot cover claims like backpay that require individualized proof for each employee.
- Because Wal-Mart is entitled to raise individual defenses to each backpay claim, the Court rejected the lower court's plan to extrapolate backpay awards from a small sample of claims, calling it an improper 'Trial by Formula' that would strip Wal-Mart of its right to litigate its defenses.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms General Telephone Co. of Southwest v. Falcon (457 U. S. 147)
The Court relied on this case's framework for how to bridge the gap between an individual's claim and a class-wide claim.
Reaffirms Ticor Title Ins. Co. v. Brown (511 U. S. 117)
The Court built on this case's doubts about certifying monetary claims under the injunctive-relief class rule.