Category Archives Judge Medler

As part of our analysis, we’ve been looking at how Missouri courts have been interpreting the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Wal Mart v. Dukes, 1341 S. Ct. 2541 (2011).  As you probably recall, Dukes has been lauded as a game-changer by some on the defense side, or dismissed by some as a recapitulation of prior law and the product of a really bad fact pattern by others.   Without getting into too much detail on a subject well-covered in several places, Justice Scalia wrote for the majority in reversing the certification of a massive class of some 1.5 million female current and former Wal Mart employees alleging Title VII discrimination under a disparate impact theory.  At the risk of oversimplifying, the Dukes majority denied certification under b(3) because in the absence of a companywide discriminatory pay and promotion policy, there was no common question, and denied injunctive certification under…