Walmart v. Dukes

Background

In Wal-Mart v. Dukes, the Supreme Court found that the plaintiffs failed to satisfy the class certification requirement that “there are questions of law or fact common to the class.” In their original complaint, the plaintiffs argued that Wal-Mart'fs policy of giving local managers significant discretion in making pay and promotion decisions had a negative impact on women, especially when combined with a “corporate culture” that allegedly permitted bias. However, this allegation fell short of satisfying the commonality requirement, because the policy of giving wide discretion to local managers did not affect every class member in the same way. Similarly, the plaintiffs failed to connect the employment decisions concerning more than a million plaintiffs to any company-wide corporate policy. Moreover, the plaintiffs failed to put forward any proof that the managers involved exercised their discretion in any common way. The plaintiffs'f anecdotal evidence of discriminatory statements, statistical evidence of pay and promotions patterns, and expert testimony regarding the impact of Wal-Mart'fs corporate culture was not enough to prove commonality between plaintiffs situated across the country in the absence of some uniform, discriminatory policy concerning pay and promotion decisions.