Opinion ID: $opinion_id
Heading Depth: 2.0
Heading Rank: 4

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Text: A divided en banc Court of Appeals substantially af firmed the District Court’s certification order. 603 F. 3d 571. The majority concluded that respondents’ evidence of commonality was sufficient to “raise the common question whether Wal-Mart’s female employees nationwide were subjected to a single set of corporate policies (not merely a number of independent discriminatory acts) that may have worked to unlawfully discriminate against them in violation of Title VII.” Id., at 612 (emphasis deleted). It also agreed with the District Court that the named plain tiffs’ claims were sufficiently typical of the class as a whole to satisfy Rule 23(a)(3), and that they could serve as ade quate class representatives, see Rule 23(a)(4). Id., at 614– 615. With respect to the Rule 23(b)(2) question, the Ninth Circuit held that respondents’ backpay claims could be certified as part of a (b)(2) class because they did not “predominat[e]” over the requests for declaratory and injunctive relief, meaning they were not “superior in strength, influence, or authority” to the nonmonetary claims. Id., at 616 (internal quotation marks omitted).4

Finally, the Court of Appeals determined that the action could be manageably tried as a class action because the District Court could adopt the approach the Ninth Circuit approved in Hilao v. Estate of Marcos, 103 F. 3d 767, 782– 787 (1996). There compensatory damages for some 9,541 class members were calculated by selecting 137 claims at random, referring those claims to a special master for valuation, and then extrapolating the validity and value of the untested claims from the sample set. See 603 F. 3d, at 625–626. The Court of Appeals “s[aw] no reason why a similar procedure to that used in Hilao could not be em ployed in this case.” Id., at 627. It would allow Wal-Mart “to present individual defenses in the randomly selected ‘sample cases,’ thus revealing the approximate percentage of class members whose unequal pay or nonpromotion was due to something other than gender discrimination.” Ibid., n. 56 (emphasis deleted).

We granted certiorari. 562 U. S. ___ (2010).