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Page Number: 18.0

14 

WAL-MART STORES, INC. v. DUKES 

Opinion of the Court 

U. S.  579  (1993).8    The  District  Court  concluded  that 
Daubert did not apply to expert testimony at the certifica-
tion stage of class-action proceedings.  222 F. R. D., at 191. 
We  doubt  that  is  so,  but  even  if  properly  considered, 
Bielby’s  testimony  does  nothing  to  advance  respondents’ 
case.  “[W]hether 0.5 percent or 95 percent of the employ-
ment  decisions  at  Wal-Mart  might  be  determined  by
stereotyped  thinking”  is  the  essential  question  on  which 
respondents’  theory  of  commonality  depends. 
If  Bielby
admittedly  has  no  answer  to  that  question,  we  can  safely 
disregard  what  he  has  to  say.    It  is  worlds  away  from
“significant  proof ”  that  Wal-Mart  “operated  under  a  gen-
eral policy of discrimination.” 

C 

The  only  corporate  policy  that  the  plaintiffs’  evidence 
convincingly establishes is Wal-Mart’s “policy” of allowing 
discretion  by  local  supervisors  over  employment  matters.
On its face, of course, that is just the opposite of a uniform
employment practice that would provide the commonality 
needed  for  a  class  action;  it  is  a  policy  against  having 
uniform  employment  practices.    It  is  also  a  very  common 

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8 Bielby’s conclusions in this case have elicited criticism from the very 
scholars on whose conclusions he relies for his social-framework analy-
sis.  See Monahan, Walker, & Mitchell, Contextual Evidence of Gender 
Discrimination:  The  Ascendance  of  “Social  Frameworks,”  94  Va. 
L. Rev. 1715,  1747  (2008)  (“[Bielby’s]  research  into  conditions  and  be-
havior  at  Wal-Mart  did  not  meet  the  standards  expected  of  social
scientific  research  into  stereotyping  and  discrimination”);  id.,  at  1745, 
1747  (“[A]  social  framework  necessarily  contains  only  general  state-
ments about reliable patterns of relations among variables . . . and goes
no further. . . .  Dr. Bielby claimed to present a social framework, but he
testified  about  social  facts  specific  to  Wal-Mart”);  id.,  at  1747–1748 
(“Dr.  Bielby’s  report  provides  no  verifiable  method  for  measuring  and 
testing  any  of  the  variables  that  were  crucial  to  his  conclusions  and
reflects  nothing  more  than  Dr.  Bielby’s  ‘expert  judgment’  about  how 
general stereotyping research applied to all managers across all of Wal-
Mart’s stores nationwide for the multi-year class period”).