Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(a), in order to certify a class, plaintiffs must satisfy four prerequisites, commonly referred to as: (1) “numerosity,” (2) “commonality,” (3) “typicality” and (4) “adequacy of the class representative.” On June 20, 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Wal-Mart Stores v. Dukes, 131 S. Ct. 2541 (2011), reversing a grant of class certification to a class of approximately 1.5 million female employees of Wal-Mart Stores. In its 5-4 decision, the court found that the class could not be certified because the plaintiffs failed to satisfy the “commonality” requirement.

Dukes promised to change the manner in which courts analyze class certification motions by creating a more stringent commonality standard. According to the Dukes court, it is not the ability to raise common questions that matters to class certification, but rather whether a class-wide proceeding can generate common answers apt to drive the resolution of the litigation. Dukes requires plaintiffs to show that “class members have suffered the same injury, not merely a violation of the same law,” and that their common contentions are capable of class-wide resolution, meaning that the determination of their truth or falsity “will resolve an issue that is central to the validity of each one of the claims in one stroke.”

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