The United States Supreme Court ruled on June 20, 2011, that a class comprised of an estimated 1.5 million former and current female Wal-Mart employees could not proceed with a class action lawsuit alleging gender discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Due in part to the sheer magnitude of the proposed class, the case – Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes – has received an enormous amount of media attention. 

The Supreme Court had to determine whether former and current employees could proceed with their claims together in the form of a class action sex discrimination lawsuit. The plaintiffs alleged that Wal-Mart discriminated against female employees by denying them equal pay and/or promotions.  The employees claimed that local managers exercise their discretion over pay and promotions disproportionately in favor of men, which has an unlawful discriminatory impact on female employees.  Wal-Mart’s refusal to limit its managers’ authority amounts to disparate treatment.  The plaintiffs argued that this broad discretion created a discriminatory corporate culture that included the use of gender stereotypes in pay and promotion decisions. 

Wal-Mart countered by arguing that the plaintiffs could not satisfy the legal prerequisites for a class action. Under federal law, in order to be certified as a class, the plaintiffs must demonstrate that there are questions of law or fact common to the class. Wal-Mart contended that the plaintiffs could not meet this “commonality” standard because their individual experiences with the Company were distinguishably different, decision-making was decentralized, and the only written policy that was relevant was one that prohibited all forms of discrimination. In other words, Wal-Mart argued there was no evidence of an illegal policy or practice common to all of the plaintiffs.

The Supreme Court sided with Wal-Mart. The Court held that a party seeking class certification needs to prove that the class has common “questions of law or fact.” The claims must depend upon a common contention of a nature that is capable of classwide resolution—which means that determination of its truth or falsity will resolve an issue that is central to the validity of each one of the claims in one stroke.  The employees wished to sue for millions of employment decisions at once. Without some glue holding together the alleged reasons for those decisions, it would be impossible to say that examination of all the class members’ claims will produce a common answer to the crucial discrimination question. The only corporate policy that the plaintiffs’ evidence convincingly established is Wal-Mart’s “policy” of giving local supervisors discretion over employment matters. While such a policy could be the basis of a Title VII disparate-impact claim, recognizing that a claim “can” exist does not mean that every employee in a company with that policy has a common claim. In a company of Wal-Mart’s size and geographical scope, it is unlikely that all managers would exercise their discretion in a common way without some common direction.  The employees' attempt to show that common questions of law or fact existed fell short.  Because the Court ruled against certification of the class, the Court determined that there would be no reason to rule on the employees' back pay claims.