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24 

WAL-MART STORES, INC. v. DUKES 

Opinion of the Court 

establish a disposition that has no basis in the Rule’s text,
and  that  does  obvious  violence  to  the  Rule’s  structural 
features.  The  mere  “predominance”  of  a  proper  (b)(2) 
injunctive claim does nothing to justify elimination of Rule
23(b)(3)’s procedural protections: It neither establishes the 
superiority of class adjudication over individual adjudica-
tion nor cures the notice and opt-out problems.  We fail to 
see  why  the  Rule  should  be  read  to  nullify  these  protec-
tions whenever a plaintiff class, at its option, combines its 
monetary  claims  with  a  request—even  a  “predominating 
request”—for an injunction. 

Respondents’  predominance  test,  moreover,  creates 
perverse  incentives  for  class  representatives  to  place  at 
risk  potentially  valid  claims  for  monetary  relief.    In  this 
case, for example, the named plaintiffs declined to include
employees’  claims  for  compensatory  damages  in  their
complaint.  That strategy of including only backpay claims 
made  it  more  likely  that  monetary  relief  would  not  “pre-
dominate.”  But  it  also  created  the  possibility  (if  the  pre-
dominance  test  were  correct)  that  individual  class  mem-
bers’ compensatory-damages claims would be precluded by
litigation  they  had  no  power  to  hold  themselves  apart 
from.  If it were determined, for example, that a particular
class member is not entitled to backpay because her denial 
of  increased  pay  or  a  promotion  was  not  the  product  of
discrimination,  that  employee  might  be  collaterally  es-
topped  from  independently  seeking  compensatory  dam-
ages  based  on  that  same  denial.  That  possibility  under-
scores  the  need  for  plaintiffs  with  individual  monetary
claims to decide for themselves whether to tie their fates to 
the  class  representatives’  or  go  it  alone—a  choice  Rule
23(b)(2) does not ensure that they have. 

The  predominance  test  would  also  require  the  District
Court  to  reevaluate  the  roster  of  class  members  continu-
ally.  The  Ninth  Circuit  recognized  the  necessity  for  this 
when it concluded that those plaintiffs no longer employed