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16 

WAL-MART STORES, INC. v. DUKES 

Opinion of the Court 

without  some  common  direction.  Respondents  attempt  to
make  that  showing  by  means  of  statistical  and  anecdotal 
evidence, but their evidence falls well short. 

The statistical evidence consists primarily of regression
analyses  performed  by  Dr.  Richard  Drogin,  a  statistician,
and  Dr.  Marc  Bendick,  a  labor  economist.    Drogin  con-
ducted his  analysis region-by-region, comparing the num-
ber  of  women  promoted  into  management  positions  with
the  percentage  of  women  in  the  available  pool  of  hourly 
workers.  After  considering  regional  and  national  data,
Drogin  concluded  that  “there  are  statistically  significant 
disparities  between  men  and  women  at  Wal-Mart  .  . .
[and] these disparities . . . can be explained only by gender
discrimination.”  603  F. 3d,  at  604  (internal  quotation 
marks  omitted).    Bendick  compared  work-force  data  from
Wal-Mart  and  competitive  retailers  and  concluded  that
Wal-Mart “promotes a lower percentage of women than its
competitors.”  Ibid. 

Even  if  they  are  taken  at  face  value,  these  studies  are
insufficient  to  establish  that  respondents’  theory  can  be
proved on a classwide basis.  In Falcon, we held that one 
named plaintiff ’s experience of discrimination was insuffi-
cient  to  infer  that  “discriminatory  treatment  is  typical  of
[the employer’s employment] practices.”  457 U. S., at 158. 
A similar failure of inference arises here.  As Judge Ikuta
observed in her dissent, “[i]nformation about disparities at 
the  regional  and  national  level  does  not  establish  the 
existence of disparities at individual stores, let alone raise 
the inference that a company-wide policy of discrimination 
is implemented by discretionary decisions at the store and 
district level.”  603 F. 3d, at 637.  A regional pay disparity,
for  example,  may  be  attributable  to  only  a  small  set  of
Wal-Mart  stores,  and  cannot  by  itself  establish  the  uni-
form,  store-by-store  disparity  upon  which  the  plaintiffs’ 
theory of commonality depends.

There  is  another,  more  fundamental,  respect  in  which