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Text: Petitioner Wal-Mart is the Nation’s largest private employer. It operates four types of retail stores through out the country: Discount Stores, Supercenters, Neighbor hood Markets, and Sam’s Clubs. Those stores are divided into seven nationwide divisions, which in turn comprise 41 regions of 80 to 85 stores apiece. Each store has between 40 and 53 separate departments and 80 to 500 staff posi tions. In all, Wal-Mart operates approximately 3,400 stores and employs more than one million people.

Pay and promotion decisions at Wal-Mart are generally committed to local managers’ broad discretion, which is exercised “in a largely subjective manner.” 222 F. R. D. 137, 145 (ND Cal. 2004). Local store managers may in crease the wages of hourly employees (within limits) with only limited corporate oversight. As for salaried employ ees, such as store managers and their deputies, higher corporate authorities have discretion to set their pay with in preestablished ranges.

Promotions work in a similar fashion. Wal-Mart per mits store managers to apply their own subjective criteria when selecting candidates as “support managers,” which is the first step on the path to management. Admission to Wal-Mart’s management training program, however, does require that a candidate meet certain objective criteria, including an above-average performance rating, at least one year’s tenure in the applicant’s current position, and a willingness to relocate. But except for those requirements, regional and district managers have discretion to use their own judgment when selecting candidates for management training. Promotion to higher office—e.g., assistant man ager, co-manager, or store manager—is similarly at the discretion of the employee’s superiors after prescribed objective factors are satisfied.

The named plaintiffs in this lawsuit, representing the 1.5 million members of the certified class, are three cur rent or former Wal-Mart employees who allege that the company discriminated against them on the basis of their sex by denying them equal pay or promotions, in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 78 Stat. 253, as amended, 42 U. S. C. §2000e–1 et seq.1

Betty Dukes began working at a Pittsburg, California, Wal-Mart in 1994. She started as a cashier, but later sought and received a promotion to customer service man ager. After a series of disciplinary violations, however, Dukes was demoted back to cashier and then to greeter. Dukes concedes she violated company policy, but contends that the disciplinary actions were in fact retaliation for invoking internal complaint procedures and that male employees have not been disciplined for similar infrac tions. Dukes also claims two male greeters in the Pitts burg store are paid more than she is.

Christine Kwapnoski has worked at Sam’s Club stores in Missouri and California for most of her adult life. She has held a number of positions, including a supervisory position. She claims that a male manager yelled at her frequently and screamed at female employees, but not at men. The manager in question “told her to ‘doll up,’ to wear some makeup, and to dress a little better.” App. 1003a.

The final named plaintiff, Edith Arana, worked at a Wal-Mart store in Duarte, California, from 1995 to 2001. In 2000, she approached the store manager on more than one occasion about management training, but was brushed off. Arana concluded she was being denied opportunity for advancement because of her sex. She initiated internal complaint procedures, whereupon she was told to apply directly to the district manager if she thought her store manager was being unfair. Arana, however, decided against that and never applied for management training again. In 2001, she was fired for failure to comply with Wal-Mart’s timekeeping policy.

These plaintiffs, respondents here, do not allege that Wal-Mart has any express corporate policy against the advancement of women. Rather, they claim that their local managers’ discretion over pay and promotions is exercised disproportionately in favor of men, leading to an unlawful disparate impact on female employees, see 42 U. S. C. §2000e–2(k). And, respondents say, because WalMart is aware of this effect, its refusal to cabin its manag ers’ authority amounts to disparate treatment, see §2000e–2(a). Their complaint seeks injunctive and de claratory relief, punitive damages, and backpay. It does not ask for compensatory damages.

Importantly for our purposes, respondents claim that the discrimination to which they have been subjected is common to all Wal-Mart’s female employees. The basic theory of their case is that a strong and uniform “corporate culture” permits bias against women to infect, perhaps subconsciously, the discretionary decisionmaking of each one of Wal-Mart’s thousands of managers—thereby mak ing every woman at the company the victim of one com mon discriminatory practice. Respondents therefore wish to litigate the Title VII claims of all female employees at Wal-Mart’s stores in a nationwide class action.

Class certification is governed by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23. Under Rule 23(a), the party seeking certifi cation must demonstrate, first, that:

“(1) the class is so numerous that joinder of all members is impracticable,

“(2) there are questions of law or fact common to the class,

“(3) the claims or defenses of the representative par ties are typical of the claims or defenses of the class, and

“(4) the representative parties will fairly and ade

quately protect the interests of the class” (paragraph

breaks added).

Second, the proposed class must satisfy at least one of the three requirements listed in Rule 23(b). Respondents rely on Rule 23(b)(2), which applies when “the party opposing the class has acted or refused to act on grounds that apply generally to the class, so that final injunctive relief or corresponding declaratory relief is appropriate respecting the class as a whole.”2

Invoking these provisions, respondents moved the Dis trict Court to certify a plaintiff class consisting of “ ‘[a]ll women employed at any Wal-Mart domestic retail store at any time since December 26, 1998, who have been or may be subjected to Wal-Mart’s challenged pay and man agement track promotions policies and practices.’ ” 222 F. R. D., at 141–142 (quoting Plaintiff ’s Motion for Class Certification in case No. 3:01–cv–02252–CRB (ND Cal.), Doc. 99, p. 37). As evidence that there were indeed “ques tions of law or fact common to” all the women of Wal-Mart, as Rule 23(a)(2) requires, respondents relied chiefly on three forms of proof: statistical evidence about pay and promotion disparities between men and women at the company, anecdotal reports of discrimination from about 120 of Wal-Mart’s female employees, and the testimony of a sociologist, Dr. William Bielby, who conducted a “social framework analysis” of Wal-Mart’s “culture” and person nel practices, and concluded that the company was “vul nerable” to gender discrimination. 603 F. 3d 571, 601 (CA9 2010) (en banc).

Wal-Mart unsuccessfully moved to strike much of this evidence. It also offered its own countervailing statistical and other proof in an effort to defeat Rule 23(a)’s require ments of commonality, typicality, and adequate represen tation. Wal-Mart further contended that respondents’ monetary claims for backpay could not be certified under Rule 23(b)(2), first because that Rule refers only to injunc tive and declaratory relief, and second because the back pay claims could not be manageably tried as a class with out depriving Wal-Mart of its right to present certain statutory defenses. With one limitation not relevant here, the District Court granted respondents’ motion and certi fied their proposed class.3

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).