The US Supreme Court in Wal-Mart v. Dukes ruled that a group of women seeking to recover damages from Wal-Mart failed to meet the requirements for class certification. The case, a Title VII gender discrimination class action lawsuit estimated to include more than 1.5 million women, was filed in 2001 by female Wal-Mart employees who contend that Wal-Mart’s nationwide policies result in lower pay for women than men in comparable positions and longer waits for management promotions than men.

Wal-Mart appealed to the Supreme Court in August after the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld class certification in April. The Supreme Court held that the class action did not satisfy Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(a) (2) , which requires a class to prove that class members have common “questions of law or fact. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, along with Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, concurred in part and dissented in part. Ginsburg argued that the majority conflates the 23(a) commonality requirement with the 23(b) (3) “predominance” criteria, a much higher standard to satisfy. She wrote that the class does in fact satisfy 23(a)’s threshold requirements but fails to meet the 23(b)(2) certification category. The issue of whether the class satisfies 23(b)(3), Ginsburg said, is a matter that should be left to the lower court on remand.

US Supreme Court rejects class action lawsuit against Wal-Mart

Report by Reben