Wal-Mart v. Dukes - Research Paper Example

The case passed through the district court, ninth Circuit, ninth Circuit en banc and finally to the US Supreme Court in which the Supreme Court reversed the decision of the ninth Circuit en banc on numerous grounds which attracts vehement support on my part. 1. Arguments in favor of the Supreme Court decision There are numerous reasons for the correctness of the decision of the Supreme Court, which may be found on the judgment itself as passed by the Supreme Court, and summed up as follows: I) There must be a common mode of exercising discretion which should be present throughout the company and the respondents in this case were unable to show it.

It was unbelievable to conclude by the justices that all the managers would exercise discretion in a common way without any common direction. (Wal Mart 15-16). II) The statistical evidence which was provided by the respondents was insufficient to prove their theory on a class wide basis even if it is taken that they were correct prima facie (Wal Mart 16). III) As per Rule 23(a) (2), it was to find out whether even a single common question existed between the class in order to determine commonality for a class action and found by the court that as the respondents could not provide any convincing evidence to show that a companywide discriminatory and promotion policy existed, the existence of any common question is not established (Wal Mart 19). IV) The respondents also provided anecdotal evidence in support.

Respondents submitted about 120 affidavits, which is equivalent to 1 for every 12,500 members in this case. Half of the reports are concentrated only on six states and half of all the States have only one or two cases of sexual discrimination. 14 States have no anecdotes. Even if all the accounts are taken to be true it does not show that the whole company operates under a common policy of discrimination (Wal Mart 18). V) If the plea for monetary relief of the respondent under Rule 23 (b)(2) Civil Procedure is taken into consideration ,it was not correct as Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(2) is for injunctive or declaratory relief and not for monetary relief (Wal Mart 20). VI) Commonality requires more than an alleged common violation of the same law (Hyman).

The mere claim that they have suffered a Title VII injury won’t be enough to give rise to class action; they must have some common contention in addition (Wal Mart 9). As such the respondent’s action under Rule 23 was not proper. 2) Impact of the decision on future cases Despite the legal accuracy and justification of the Supreme Court decision the decision may have some bad impact so far future cases on the same issue are concerned. The impact may be summed up as follows: I) The court’s decision of reversing the case can harm the enforcement of civil rights and employment discrimination laws.

The Supreme Court’s decision of decertifying the Dukes class action may make it hard for other plaintiffs to bring class actions depending on the court’s reasoning (Wal Mart v. Dukes 10). II) The fact is that in the instant case the Supreme did not rule on merits of the plaintiffs claims and this may be the reason that Wal Mart may face thousands of individual or multiple-plaintiff lawsuits alleging that a particular manager had discriminated against women (Murray 2). III) It will be difficult for the plaintiffs to obtain class certification in all cases.

After the decision on this case, it