Dukes

Plaintiffs filed a class action suit against Wal-Mart alleging sexual discrimination under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The district court certified the class with minor modifications to Plaintiffs’ proposed class. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1292 (e). For the reasons set forth below, we affirm the district court, concluding that it did not abuse its discretion when it certified the class.

BACKGROUND

Plaintiffs’ Third Amended Complaint, brought on behalf of six named plaintiffs and all others similarly situated, asserts claims against Wal-Mart for sex discrimination under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Plaintiffs alleged that women employed in Wal-Mart stores: (1) are paid less than men in comparable positions, despite having higher performance ratings and greater seniority, and (2) receive fewer — and wait longer for — promotions to in-store management positions than men. Plaintiffs contend that Wal-Mart’s strong, centralized structure fosters or facilitates gender stereotyping and discrimination, that the policies and practices underlying this discriminatory treatment are consistent throughout Wal-Mart stores, and that this discrimination is…

dissenting:

I respectfully dissent. Class action certification violates the Rule 23 class action certification criteria and deprives Wal-Mart of due process of law.

Class actions need special justification because they are “an exception to the usual rule that litigation is conducted by and on behalf of the individual named parties only.” 1 They are designed largely to solve an attorneys’ fees problem. “The policy at the very core of the class action mechanism is to overcome the problem that small recoveries do not provide the incentive for any individual to bring a solo action prosecuting his or her rights. A class action solves this problem by aggregating the relatively paltry potential recoveries into something worth someone’s (usually an attorney’s) labor.” 2 That need does not pertain here, because the substantial value of sex discrimination claims, the availability of lawyers on contingent fee, and statutory attorney’s fees awards 3 “eliminate financial barriers that might make individual lawsuits unlikely or infeasible.”

While a class action can have the virtue of assuring equal justice to all class members, it can also have the vice of binding them to something less…

BACKGROUND

Plaintiffs’ Third Amended Complaint, brought on behalf of six named plaintiffs and all others similarly situated, asserts claims against Wal-Mart for sex discrimination under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Plaintiffs alleged that women employed in Wal-Mart stores: (1) are paid less than men in comparable positions, despite having higher perfor- mance ratings and greater seniority, and (2) receive fewer — and wait longer for — promotions to in-store management 1340 DUKES v. WAL-MART, INC. positions than men. Plaintiffs contend that Wal-Mart’s strong, centralized structure fosters or facilitates gender stereotyping and discrimination, that the policies and practices underlying this discriminatory treatment are consistent throughout Wal- Mart stores, and that this discrimination is common to all women who work or have worked in Wal-Mart stores.

Plaintiffs seek class-wide injunctive and declaratory relief, lost pay, and punitive damages. They do not seek any com- pensatory damages on behalf of the class, which is estimated to include more than 1.5 million women. The class encom- passes women employed in a range of Wal-Mart positions — from…