On June 20, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision when it decided Wal-Mart v. Dukes , and decertified what would have been “one of the most expansive class actions ever.” In a 5-4 decision, the court, in an opinion authored by Justice Antonin Scalia, found that the plaintiffs failed to meet the “commonality” requirement for class certification under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(a), reversing both the district court and 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in a dissent joined by Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, strongly disagreed with the majority and argued that the district court’s finding of commonality “was hardly infirm.”
However, in a section of the opinion joined by all nine justices, the court held that, even where the commonality requirement is met, Rule 23(b)(2) will not support a class action in which the plaintiffs are seeking individualized monetary relief, as were the plaintiffs in Dukes. Undoubtedly, the impact of Dukes will be far reaching not only for employment discrimination class actions, but for all types of class actions, including in the antitrust context.
