1. What did the Supreme Court decide in the Wal-Mart case? And more importantly, how did it justify its decision? (HINT: the key word here is “commonality” (and how it related to “class-action lawsuit”). Try to understand what this legal terms means, as it is key to the court’s decision).
   In the War-mart v. Dukes case, the U.S.  supreme court ruled against the plaintiff .The U.S. The Supreme Court claimed that Betty Dukes and the other women didn’t meet the requirements for the class action lawsuit due to not following rule 23 of the federal rules of civil procedure . The U.S. Supreme Courtount found that this women lacked the “commonality” required for the lawsuit since this women problems weren’t all allied and consisted .Therefore, to have a good class action lawsuit the plaintiffs should have a “commonality”.However , the plaintiffs did share one problem which was sex discrimination ,but this women had different experiences working at Wal-mart. According to the plaintiff , their “commonality” was their experiences of sex discrimination and men favoritism within the Wal-Mart company but all of the women did not share the same problem . Due to this the U.S. supreme court decided not to move forward with the lawsuit. 
   
   

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the plaintiffs, deciding that the class-action lawsuit filed by Betty Dukes and other women did not meet the requirements necessary to proceed as a class action under Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The Court determined that the plaintiffs’ request for injunctive relief and back pay was procedurally flawed. It held that these types of relief could not be pursued together under the specific “b(2)” classification they used. The Court also found that the class lacked the “commonality” required for certification.

Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, argued that for a class to meet the commonality requirement, its members must share common questions of law or fact and a common solution that could resolve the claims of all class members in a single stroke. He contended that because Wal-Mart’s alleged discriminatory practices stemmed from decentralized managerial discretion rather than a unified corporate policy, the women’s experiences varied too widely. Without a unifying “glue” to connect the claims—such as a central discriminatory policy—there was no single answer to the crucial question, “Why was I disfavored?” In the Court’s view, this lack of a consistent thread rendered the class-action approach inappropriate.

The dissent, led by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, criticized the majority’s interpretation of commonality, arguing that Wal-Mart’s culture of discretionary practices had a demonstrable pattern of gender bias across the company. She emphasized that even decentralized practices can lead to systemic discrimination and that such patterns should suffice to establish commonality under Rule 23. However, the majority’s narrow definition of commonality prevailed.

What did the Supreme Court decide in the Wal-Mart case? And more importantly, how did it justify its decision? (HINT: the key word here is “commonality” (and how it related to “class-action lawsuit”). Try to understand what this legal terms means, as it is key to the court’s decision).

In the Wal-Mart v. Dukes case, the Supreme Court decided that the women who were suing Wal-Mart couldn’t move forward with their class-action lawsuit. The women claimed Wal-Mart discriminated against them in pay and promotions, but the Court said their situations were too different to combine into one case. The key issue was something called “commonality”, which means for a class action lawsuit to happen, the people suing need to have a shared, common issue. Since the women’s experiences varied like where they worked or who their manager was. The Court decided they didn’t have enough in common to join together in a single lawsuit because of that each woman’s case had to be handled separately.

In the Wal-Mart case, Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., the Supreme Court decided not to move forward with a class action lawsuit that over one million female employees filed against Wal-Mart. The decision mainly focused on the requirement of “commonality,” a key element for class-action lawsuits under Rule 23(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. This requirement means that the members of the lawsuit must have similar legal issues or situations that would warrant addressing their claims together. Justice Scalia, leading the majority opinion, argued that the plaintiffs failed to show that Wal-Mart had a company-wide policy of discrimination impacting all the class members. He noted that there wasn’t a consistent link or “glue” across the numerous employment decisions at various Wal-Mart stores. Without a clear, overarching policy of discrimination, the court felt that each claim would need individual examination to understand the specific details and context. The court reasoned that simply showing variations in pay and promotions across Wal-Mart didn’t sufficiently demonstrate common legal or factual questions. Since the plaintiffs couldn’t trace these issues to a uniform discriminatory policy affecting everyone, the differences in how individual stores operated meant that each complaint might need to be considered on its own. The majority stressed that for a class action to be approved, it must demonstrate that all plaintiffs suffered the same type of harm under the same corporate policy. Lacking this uniformity, the court suggested that individual lawsuits were more suitable for addressing these complaints. This ruling is significant as it points out the difficulties of proving widespread discrimination in large, decentralized companies where management practices can differ greatly. It set a precedent that for a class-action suit to be certified, there needs to be a clear and common thread in the discrimination claims across the entire class.

During the wal-mart case the Supreme Court ruled that the woman who was suing wal-mart could not move forward with the case as a class action lawsuit. In order to move forward with a class action lawsuit you need to have all members to share the same situation, meaning the members have to prove and share the same situation as the woman suing wal-mart (commonality). Commonality is when a group of people come together from a company and report the same exact situation because they all deal with it.

1. What did the Supreme Court decide in the Wal-Mart case? And more importantly, how did it justify its decision? (HINT: the key word here is “commonality” (and how it related to “class-action lawsuit”). Try to understand what this legal terms means, as it is key to the court’s decision). The initial basis between the Betty Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc case is that 1.5 million female workers joined Betty Dukes in a class-action lawsuit through the commonality of feeling that Wal-Mart treats their femal employees worse than their male employees. The basis for this through multiple reasons, such as women being paid less than men across 41 different retail region, the wage gap between women and men increasing every year (where women would continue to earn less and less as the years went on despite, women typically making up more of the hourly workforce and women sticking around the job longer than men) and having those reasons justified by the men working within the stores (such as telling them to “doll up” if they ever wanted to advance in the company). From all of this, Betty Dukes and the 1.5 Million female workers within the class-action lawsuit demanded back-pay for the female workers due to this discrimination. What the supreme court ended up deciding from this case was to rule in favor of Wal-mart and to turn down the lawsuit that was filed against them. The reason why they did this is because two major reasons: the way that the supreme court classified the type of relief that the 1.5 million female workers were looking for and how much their “commonality” overlapped. Due the fact that the 1.5 female workers were asking for back pay (even though the major point of this case being the discrimination between males and female workers in wal-mart), the supreme court treated this as a b3 claim, which ended up compromising the class status of the women who joined in the lawsuit and prevented the case as being treated as a discriminatory issue. The other reason why the lawsuit was denied was because of the fact that the 1.5 million female workers that joined in the class-action lawsuit weren’t dealing with a problem that would require the same solution, which led to the supreme court decided that the women that were part of the lawsuit didn’t share any commonality with one another. These two reasons were what ultimately led to the supreme court ruling in favor of Wal-Mart.

1. The Supreme Court ruled that they could not certify the class action lawsuit against Walmart which was in large part due to the lack of commonality within the case. Commonality is the core fundamental detail that was missing in a class action suit. They believed that there was no certain provision or policy that was put into place by Walmart that directly connected to every claim . Because it was a class action lawsuit, the claim of discrimination had to directly impact every women in Walmart, and additionally, that the solution must be the same for each individual problem. Because that wasn’t the case, there was no commonality that existed in the case, leading to the lawsuit falling through.

In the Wal-Mart v. Dukes case, the Supreme Court said the women could not sue as a group (class-action). The Court explained that they did not have “commonality,” which means they didn’t all share the same problem that could be solved in one case.

The women said local managers were unfair, but the Court said managers made different decisions in different stores, so there wasn’t one big problem affecting everyone the same way. Without this, they couldn’t sue as one group.