Plaintiffs Once Again Denied Class Certification In Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

In the latest chapter in what is now a twelve-year legal battle, plaintiffs seeking to bring gender-based disparate treatment and disparate impact claims against Wal-Mart with regard to the retail giant's pay and promotion decisions were again denied class certification in Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., No. CV 01-022520-CRB (N.D. Cal. Aug. 2, 2013).  Following the United States Supreme Court's 2011 landmark ruling in which the Court concluded that plaintiffs had failed to point to a common question capable of resolution across the proposed nationwide class and thus failed to satisfy the commonality requirement of Federal Rule 23(a)(2) (Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 131 S. Ct. 2541 (2011)), plaintiffs filed a fourth amended complaint seeking to re-define a class of female employees working in Wal-Mart's "California Regions" that would conform to the Court's ruling.  The proposed re-defined class, however, was squarely rejected by District Judge Charles Breyer, who