In 2011, the U. S. Supreme Court issued a landmark decision regarding certification of employment discrimination class actions. The opinion, Wal-Mart v. Dukes, rejected the “trial by formula” approach of allowing a random sample of the class members’ claims to be tried, with the results of those trials to be applied to the entire class. Among other problems, the Court found that this shortcut approach deprived defendants of the ability to litigate statutory defenses to individualized claims. Dukes, however, did not reach the narrower issue of whether “representative,” “sample” or “anecdotal” evidence” is ever appropriate in a class-action employment case.
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