Opinion ID: 78615
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Dissent's Significant Proof Standard

Text: In addition to setting out our own review, we feel compelled to discuss the dissent's consideration of this issue. The Supreme Court's decisions in Falcon and Eisen are the primary guides to our ruling in this case. The dissent, in suggesting that we are unfaithful to Falcon, seeks to create a new class action requirement based on a hypothetical in one sentence of Supreme Court dicta; conflates, or at least fails to distinguish, the posture of Falcon and the present case; ignores the weight of the many cases in other circuits arriving at the same standard we have described above; and renders itself unpersuasive by critiquing the district court's eighty-four-page analysis as insufficiently rigorous. In doing so, the dissent is unfaithful to the actual distinctions the Supreme Court relied upon in Falcon, and variously depicts Falcon as instituting a significant proof burden or `significant proof' requirement that Falcon did not create. Dissent at 633, 637-38. We read Falcon, as has nearly every Court of Appeals to consider the question, as creating the standard we describe above. But in discussing what it views as the analysis required by Falcon, the dissent quotes a portion of a sentence of Falcon dicta in footnote 15 as standing for the requirement that plaintiffs cannot prevail at the certification stage without showing [s]ignificant proof that an employer operated under a general policy of discrimination. Id. at 632. However, the entire footnote sentence reads as follows: Significant proof that an employer operated under a general policy of discrimination conceivably could justify a class of both applicants and employees if the discrimination manifested itself in hiring and promotion practices in the same general fashion, such as through entirely subjective decision-making processes.  Falcon, 457 U.S. at 159 n. 15, 102 S.Ct. 2364 (emphasis added). [15] Falcon 's discussion of two distinct processeshiring and promotionfor which significant proof could prove sufficient to certify a single class, is an unusually high standard that Plaintiffs here need not meet because they did not present the distinct legal theories of recovery that the Falcon plaintiffs, both employees and applicants, had pursued together in one class. The question before the district court was not whether [Plaintiffs] have definitively proven disparate treatment and a disparate impact; rather, the question was whether the basis of [Plaintiffs'] discrimination claims was sufficient to support class certification. Brown v. Nucor Corp., 576 F.3d 149, 156 (4th Cir.2009), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 130 S.Ct. 1720, 176 L.Ed.2d 185 (2010). Contrary to the dissent, [16] Falcon does not say that Plaintiffs must show a common policy of proven discrimination at the class action stage, rather than just a common policy alleged to be discriminatory. 457 U.S. at 158-59, 102 S.Ct. 2364. Of course, as we have already explained, named plaintiffs must do more than merely allege discriminatory practices against themselves. Id. As we demonstrate below, Plaintiffs here do so, making showings through their expert testimony and statistical evidence, which further distinguishes the certification decision here from that decision in Falcon. In maintaining otherwise in its discussion, the dissent confuses merits decisions such as Teamsters, 431 U.S. at 336, 97 S.Ct. 1843, and class action certification decisions. [17] It also ignores our previous statement examining Falcon footnote 15 in which we explained that [w]e understand footnote fifteen of Falcon to present a demonstrative example rather than a limited exception to the overall skepticism toward broad discrimination class actions. Staton, 327 F.3d at 955. In other words, as we have previously described Falcon, the Supreme Court does not generally ban all broad classes but rather precludes a class action that, on the basis of one form of discrimination against one or a handful of plaintiffs, seeks to adjudicate all forms of discrimination against all members of a group protected by Title VII, § 1981, or a similar statute. Id. The dissent also largely ignores Supreme Court guidance by failing to recognize that Falcon addressed the claim that the allegations of an employee subject to discrimination in promotion decisions fairly encompassed the claims of non-employees allegedly subject to discrimination in a discrete hiring process. Falcon, 457 U.S. at 158, 102 S.Ct. 2364. Such a determination under Rule 23 is clearly distinct from an inquiry where, as here, a class consists entirely of individuals actually employed under the same corporate policies. [18] Critically, in Falcon, the individual plaintiff's claim was based on promotion practices for his allegations and hiring practices for the putative class members, yet Falcon's complaint contained no factual allegations concerning petitioner's hiring practices, id. at 150, 102 S.Ct. 2364, despite the fact that the class members' claims depended on pattern or practice in hiring, id. at 159, 102 S.Ct. 2364. In contrast, where the individual plaintiffs seek to prove their own cases through pattern or practice methods, they are necessarily dependent on proving facts relevant to others of the same protected group subject to the same policy, class action or no class action. See Watson, 487 U.S. at 994-95, 108 S.Ct. 2777; see also Nagareda, Aggregate Proof, supra, at 150 (The terms `pattern' and `practice' themselves imply an aggregate perspective.). Finally, Plaintiffs here are unlike the plaintiff in Falcon, who failed to otherwise []support [his] allegation that the company ha[d] a policy of discrimination except by claiming that he himself had been denied a promotion on discriminatory grounds. Falcon, 457 U.S. at 157-58, 102 S.Ct. 2364. As we detail below, Plaintiffs here have introduced significant proof of Wal-Mart's policies, and their effects on the certified class, and have introduced evidence of far more than the validity of [their] own claim[s]. Id. Even if the dissent were correct in creating a significant proof standard (or burden, or requirement), which it is not, it would not apply to Plaintiffs in this case. Subjective decisionmaking processes are exactly what the Plaintiffs allege here and what the Supreme Court's hypothetical expressed concern with in Falcon. Id. at 159 n. 15, 102 S.Ct. 2364. In addition, it is not clear that such a standard, if it existed, need apply to Plaintiffseveryone of whom was or is an employeeat all because they are not situated as the Falcon plaintiffs, who were both employees seeking promotion and job applicants pursuing a position and thus needed to show different facts and allege diverging legal theories. Again unlike in Falcon, and as discussed in detail below, the district court here did not presume or fail to evaluate carefully the legitimacy [of Plaintiffs' claims to be] proper class representative[s], id. at 160, 102 S.Ct. 2364, but rather found Rule 23 satisfied only after undertaking the rigorous analysis the Supreme Court requires, see Dukes, 222 F.R.D. at 143-69. The specific recognition of Falcon 's rigorous analysis requirement guided the district court's analysis throughout its lengthy order, and the court made determinations that each of Rule 23's requirements were satisfied. Id. at 143-44, 166-68 (applying Falcon ). The dissent's attenuated claim that the district court abused its discretion by failing to require a specific presentation identifying the questions of law or fact that were common to the claims of respondent and of the members of the class he sought to represent, see Falcon, 457 U.S. at 158, 102 S.Ct. 2364, is vitiated by the twenty-four pages in which the district court exhaustively performed exactly that analysis, explicitly considering questions of law and fact that were common to the members of the class and the named representatives, [19] see Dukes, 222 F.R.D. at 145-69. In short, and as we will now explain, at the certification stage, it is difficult for us to envision a more rigorous analysis than the one the district court conducted.