Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes

Background

A group of current and former female Wal‑Mart employees, led by three named women, sued the company claiming managers’ discretionary pay and promotion decisions disadvantaged women. They sought nationwide injunctive and declaratory relief, punitive damages, and backpay on behalf of about 1.5 million female employees. The District Court certified a nationwide class and the Ninth Circuit largely affirmed that certification before the case reached this Court.

Reasoning

The Court focused on the class‑certification rule that requires a common question able to resolve the claims for everyone at once. The plaintiffs relied on statistical studies, about 120 anecdotes, and a sociologist’s “social framework” that argued Wal‑Mart’s corporate culture made it vulnerable to gender bias. The Court found those proofs lacking as “significant proof” of a companywide discriminatory policy. The only clear uniform policy was widespread local manager discretion, which by itself did not show a single mode of discrimination tying millions of individual decisions together.

Real world impact

The Supreme Court reversed certification: the nationwide class could not proceed as certified. The Court also held that individualized backpay claims are not properly certified under Rule 23(b)(2) when they require separate factual inquiries, and it rejected trying all claims by sampling and extrapolation. As a result, individual remedies like backpay will require individualized proceedings and different class strategies or individual suits.

Dissents or concurrances

Justice Ginsburg agreed that Rule 23(b)(2) certification was improper but dissented on commonality, arguing the District Court’s statistical, anecdotal, and expert evidence should not have been disturbed and that a (b)(3) class review belong on remand.