Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/10pdf/10-277.pdf
Page Number: 16

12 

WAL-MART STORES, INC. v. DUKES 

Opinion of the Court 

to  sue  about  literally  millions  of  employment  decisions  at 
once.  Without  some  glue  holding  the  alleged  reasons  for 
all  those  decisions  together,  it  will  be  impossible  to  say
that examination of all the class members’ claims for relief 
will produce a common answer to the crucial question why 
was I disfavored. 

B 
This  Court’s  opinion  in  Falcon  describes  how  the  com-
monality  issue  must  be  approached.  There  an  employee
who  claimed  that  he  was  deliberately  denied a  promotion
on account of race obtained certification of a class compris-
ing  all  employees  wrongfully  denied  promotions  and  all
applicants wrongfully denied jobs.  457 U. S., at 152.  We 
rejected  that  composite  class  for  lack  of  commonality  and
typicality, explaining: 

“Conceptually, there is a wide gap between (a) an in-
dividual’s  claim  that  he  has  been denied  a  promotion 
[or  higher  pay]  on  discriminatory  grounds,  and  his 
otherwise  unsupported  allegation  that  the  company 
has a policy of discrimination, and (b) the existence of
a  class  of  persons  who  have  suffered  the  same  injury
as  that  individual,  such  that  the  individual’s  claim 
and  the  class  claim  will  share  common  questions  of 
law or fact and that the individual’s claim will be typi-
cal of the class claims.”  Id., at 157–158. 

Falcon  suggested  two  ways  in  which  that  conceptual  gap 
might  be  bridged.  First,  if  the  employer  “used  a  biased
testing  procedure  to  evaluate  both  applicants  for  employ-
ment and incumbent employees, a class action on behalf of 
every  applicant  or  employee  who  might  have  been  preju-
diced  by  the  test  clearly  would  satisfy  the  commonality 
and  typicality  requirements  of  Rule  23(a).”  Id.,  at  159, 
n. 15.  Second,  “[s]ignificant  proof  that  an  employer  oper-
ated  under  a  general  policy  of  discrimination  conceivably