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Text: 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 and presumptively reasonable way of doing business—one that we have said “should itself raise no inference of dis criminatory conduct,” Watson v. Fort Worth Bank & Trust, 487 U. S. 977, 990 (1988).

To be sure, we have recognized that, “in appropriate cases,” giving discretion to lower-level supervisors can be the basis of Title VII liability under a disparate-impact theory—since “an employer’s undisciplined system of subjective decisionmaking [can have] precisely the same effects as a system pervaded by impermissible intentional discrimination.” Id., at 990–991. But the recognition that this type of Title VII claim “can” exist does not lead to the conclusion that every employee in a company using a system of discretion has such a claim in common. To the contrary, left to their own devices most managers in any corporation—and surely most managers in a corporation that forbids sex discrimination—would select sex-neutral, performance-based criteria for hiring and promotion that produce no actionable disparity at all. Others may choose to reward various attributes that produce disparate impact— such as scores on general aptitude tests or educational achievements, see Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U. S. 424, 431–432 (1971). And still other managers may be guilty of intentional discrimination that produces a sex based disparity. In such a company, demonstrating the invalidity of one manager’s use of discretion will do noth ing to demonstrate the invalidity of another’s. A party seeking to certify a nationwide class will be unable to show that all the employees’ Title VII claims will in fact depend on the answers to common questions.

Respondents have not identified a common mode of exer cising discretion that pervades the entire company—aside from their reliance on Dr. Bielby’s social frameworks analy sis that we have rejected. In a company of Wal-Mart’s size and geographical scope, it is quite unbelievable that all managers would exercise their discretion in a common way 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 respondents’ statistical proof fails. Even if it established (as it does not) a pay or promotion pattern that differs from the nationwide figures or the regional figures in all of Wal-Mart’s 3,400 stores, that would still not demonstrate that commonality of issue exists. Some managers will claim that the availability of women, or qualified women, or interested women, in their stores’ area does not mirror the national or regional statistics. And almost all of them will claim to have been applying some sex-neutral, performance-based criteria—whose nature and effects will differ from store to store. In the landmark case of ours which held that giving discretion to lower-level su pervisors can be the basis of Title VII liability under a disparate-impact theory, the plurality opinion conditioned that holding on the corollary that merely proving that the discretionary system has produced a racial or sexual disparity is not enough. “[T]he plaintiff must begin by identifying the specific employment practice that is chal lenged.” Watson, 487 U. S., at 994; accord, Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio, 490 U. S. 642, 656 (1989) (approv ing that statement), superseded by statute on other grounds, 42 U. S. C. §2000e–2(k). That is all the more necessary when a class of plaintiffs is sought to be certi fied. Other than the bare existence of delegated discre tion, respondents have identified no “specific employment practice”—much less one that ties all their 1.5 million claims together. Merely showing that Wal-Mart’s policy of discretion has produced an overall sex-based disparity does not suffice.

Respondents’ anecdotal evidence suffers from the same defects, and in addition is too weak to raise any inference that all the individual, discretionary personnel decisions are discriminatory. In Teamsters v. United States, 431 U. S. 324 (1977), in addition to substantial statistical evidence of company-wide discrimination, the Government (as plaintiff) produced about 40 specific accounts of racial 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 WalMart’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 analysis. It criticizes our focus on the dissimilarities be tween the putative class members on the ground that we have “blend[ed]” Rule 23(a)(2)’s commonality require ment with Rule 23(b)(3)’s inquiry into whether common questions “predominate” over individual ones. See post, at 8–10 (GINSBURG, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). That is not so. We quite agree that for purposes of Rule 23(a)(2) “ ‘[e]ven a single [common] question’ ” will do, post, at 10, n. 9 (quoting Nagareda, The Preexistence Principle and the Structure of the Class Action, 103 Colum. L. Rev. 149, 176, n. 110 (2003)). We consider dissimilarities not in order to determine (as Rule 23(b)(3) requires) whether common questions predominate, but in order to determine (as Rule 23(a)(2) requires) whether there is “[e]ven a single [common] question.” And there is not here. Because respondents provide no convincing proof of a companywide discriminatory pay and promotion policy, we have concluded that they have not established the existence of any common question.10

In sum, we agree with Chief Judge Kozinski that the members of the class: “held a multitude of different jobs, at different levels of Wal-Mart’s hierarchy, for variable lengths of time, in 3,400 stores, sprinkled across 50 states, with a ka leidoscope of supervisors (male and female), subject to a variety of regional policies that all differed. . . . Some thrived while others did poorly. They have little in common but their sex and this lawsuit.” 603 F. 3d,

at 652 (dissenting opinion).