As the first anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 20, 2011, landmark class action decision in Wal-Mart Stores Inc. v. Dukes, 131 S. Ct. 2541, approaches, a smattering of federal district court decisions suggest that judges are carefully parsing that opinion and still certifying class actions. Although it is far too early to project any definitive assessments, some melodramatic pronouncements of the death of class litigation in Dukes‘ wake seem premature.
The chief concern in Dukes‘ aftermath focused on the Court’s reassessment of the appropriate standard for satisfaction of the Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(a)(2) threshold commonality requirement. In determining whether a class of female Wal-Mart employees had sufficiently alleged classwide discrimination under Title VII, the Court summarized the commonality requirement as necessitating that the plaintiffs demonstrate that the class members had suffered the same injury.
