Fourth Circuit Tells Wage and Hour Plaintiffs to Put Up With Dukes

Since the Supreme Court decided Dukes v. Wal-Mart in June 2011, litigants have wrestled over its impact on wage-hour class and collective actions.  Plaintiffs typically argue that Dukes should be limited to its context—a mega Title VII discrimination case brought as a Rule 23(b)(2) class action.  Defendant-employers respond—correctly in our view—that the principles that guided the Court’s decisions, both on Rule 23’s commonality requirement and Due Process concerns over individualized proof of monetary damages, apply equally to wage and hour class and collective actions.  The Fourth Circuit (which encompasses federal courts in Maryland, the Carolinas, and the Virginias) weighed in on the debate last week, refusing to narrowly cabin the Court’s landmark decision and endorsing Dukes’ as a mandate for a “more rigorous” analysis in deciding whether to certify a state law wage-hour class action. 

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