Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/10pdf/10-277.pdf
Page Number: 35.0

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WAL-MART STORES, INC. v. DUKES 

Opinion of GINSBURG, J. 

ployees  be  willing  to  relocate.”  Id.,  at  56a.  Absent  in-
struction otherwise, there is a risk that managers will act 
on  the  familiar  assumption  that  women,  because  of  their 
services  to  husband  and  children,  are  less  mobile  than 
men.  See  Dept. of  Labor, Federal Glass Ceiling Commis-
sion,  Good  for  Business:  Making  Full  Use  of  the  Nation’s 
Human Capital 151 (1995). 

Women fill 70 percent of the hourly jobs in the retailer’s 
stores  but  make  up  only  “33  percent  of  management  em-
ployees.”  222 F. R. D., at 146.  “[T]he higher one looks in
the organization the lower the percentage of women.”  Id., 
at  155.  The  plaintiffs’  “largely  uncontested  descriptive 
statistics” also show that women working in the company’s
stores  “are  paid  less  than  men  in  every  region”  and  “that
the salary gap widens over time even for men and women 
hired  into  the  same  jobs  at  the  same  time.” 
Ibid.;  cf. 
Ledbetter  v.  Goodyear  Tire  &  Rubber  Co.,  550  U. S.  618, 
643 (2007) (GINSBURG, J., dissenting). 

The District Court identified “systems for . . . promoting
in-store  employees”  that  were  “sufficiently  similar  across 
regions and stores” to conclude that “the manner in which 
these  systems  affect  the  class  raises  issues  that  are  com-
mon  to  all  class  members.”  222  F. R. D.,  at  149.    The 
selection  of  employees  for  promotion  to  in-store  manage-
ment  “is  fairly  characterized  as  a  ‘tap  on  the  shoulder’ 
process,”  in  which  managers  have  discretion  about  whose 
shoulders to tap.  Id., at 148.  Vacancies are not regularly 
posted;  from  among  those  employees  satisfying  minimum 
qualifications,  managers  choose  whom  to  promote  on  the
basis of their own subjective impressions.  Ibid. 

Wal-Mart’s compensation policies also operate uniformly 
across stores, the District Court found.  The retailer leaves 
open a $2 band for every position’s hourly pay rate.  Wal-
Mart  provides  no  standards  or  criteria  for  setting  wages 
within that band, and thus does nothing to counter uncon-
scious bias on the part of supervisors.  See id., at 146–147.