Supreme Court Dismisses Sex Discrimination Suit Against Walmart

But Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing on behalf of the court’s liberal wing, said the court would have returned the case to a lower court and let the workers try to press ahead with a class action under a different legal theory.

Maatman and Lamechtlen, said the decision “is likely to spark a transformation of Rule 23 class certification law, and the workplace class action litigation is apt to change dramatically in the future.’

“In short, the Supreme Court’s opinion re-positions the goal posts on the playing fields of how workplace class actions are structured, defended, and litigated,” they said.

They said that in the majority ruling, the Supreme Court held that the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate commonality under Rule 23(a)(2), and unanimously held that the back pay claims could not be properly certified under Rule 23(b)(2).

“The impact of the ruling will be significant to employers for their approach to employment discrimination litigation,” Maatman and Lamechtlen said.

As such, Dukes determines how much, for purposes of Rule 23(a), class members must have in common for a class action to be certified and the extent to which claims for money damages can ever be certified under Rule 23(b)(2).

Robin Conrad, executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s National Chamber Litigation Center, was equally emphatic.

“This is without a doubt the most important class action case in more than a decade,” she said.

“We applaud the Supreme Court for affirming that mega-class actions such as this one are completely inconsistent with federal law,” she said.

“Every single Supreme Court justice disagreed with the Ninth Circuit’s decision, which radically lowered the standard for certifying class actions, and opened the door to even more bet-the-business blockbuster class actions,” Conrad said.