- In Walmart v. Dukes, the Supreme Court sided with Wal-Mart, in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court sided with Walmart ruling that the 1.6 million women suing could not proceed as a single class-action lawsuit. The Court ruled the women had failed to comply with Rule 23’s commonality agreement, which means the plaintiffs share a common question of law or fact, or something that is in common with their claims, where they can be treated as a class or one group rather than separate individuals. The Supreme Court ruled that the women’s cases were too different from each other. The Court justified the ruling by saying that the alleged discrimination varied from store to store and manager to manager, and that there was no single company practice that applied equally to everyone in the class; they needed proof of a shared discriminatory system. the Court essentially said that unless a company has a clear, centralized discriminatory policy, it can’t be sued on behalf of all affected workers at once.
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