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Page Number: 22.0

18 

WAL-MART STORES, INC. v. DUKES 

Opinion of the Court 

discrimination  from  particular  individuals.    See  id.,  at 
338.  That  number  was  significant  because  the  company 
involved  had  only  6,472  employees,  of  whom  571  were 
minorities,  id.,  at  337,  and  the  class  itself  consisted  of 
around  334  persons,  United  States  v.  T.I.M.E.-D. C.,  Inc., 
517  F. 2d  299,  308  (CA5  1975),  overruled  on  other 
grounds, Teamsters, supra.  The 40 anecdotes thus repre-
sented  roughly  one  account  for  every  eight  members  of 
the  class.  Moreover,  the  Court  of  Appeals  noted  that  the
anecdotes  came  from  individuals  “spread  throughout”  the
company who “for the most part” worked at the company’s
operational  centers  that  employed  the  largest  numbers  of 
the class members.  517 F. 2d, at 315, and n. 30.  Here, by
contrast,  respondents  filed  some  120  affidavits  reporting
experiences  of  discrimination—about  1  for  every  12,500 
class  members—relating  to  only  some  235  out  of  Wal-
Mart’s  3,400  stores.    603  F. 3d,  at  634  (Ikuta,  J.,  dissent-
ing).  More than half  of these reports are concentrated  in
only  six  States  (Alabama,  California,  Florida,  Missouri,
Texas, and Wisconsin); half of all States have only one or 
two  anecdotes;  and  14  States  have  no  anecdotes  about 
Wal-Mart’s  operations  at  all.    Id.,  at  634–635,  and  n. 10. 
Even  if  every  single  one  of  these  accounts  is  true,  that 
would  not  demonstrate  that  the  entire  company  “oper-
ate[s]  under  a  general  policy  of  discrimination,”  Falcon, 
supra, at 159, n. 15, which is what respondents must show 
to certify a companywide class.9 

The dissent misunderstands the nature of the foregoing 

—————— 

9 The dissent says that we have adopted “a rule that a discrimination
claim,  if  accompanied  by  anecdotes,  must  supply  them  in  numbers
proportionate  to  the  size  of  the  class.”    Post,  at  5,  n. 4  (GINSBURG, J., 
concurring in part and dissenting in part).  That is not quite accurate. 
A  discrimination  claimant  is  free  to  supply  as  few  anecdotes  as  he
wishes.  But  when  the  claim  is  that  a  company  operates  under  a  gen-
eral  policy  of  discrimination,  a  few  anecdotes  selected  from  literally
millions of employment decisions prove nothing at all.