Scott v. Family Dollar Stores, Inc.

Opinion

ORDER

THIS MATTER is before the court on plaintiffs' Motion for Class Certification (#211), defendant's Response (#223), and plaintiff's Reply (#244). Having considered the parties' briefs and heard oral arguments on June 22, 2016, plaintiff's Motion is GRANTED and the proposed class is CERTIFIED.

In this action, plaintiffs, female store managers of defendant Family Dollar Stores, contend that defendant created and continues to utilize a pay system that results in female managers being paid less than their male counterparts. They contend that the origin of the problem is found in a company-wide policy that places store managers who were promoted from within on a separate [*3]  and ultimately lower pay path than those hired from outside the company. They have produced evidence that those promoted from within are overwhelmingly female and that those hired from outside are overwhelmingly male, resulting in similarly situated female managers earning substantially less than their male colleagues. They have proffered evidence which, if a jury were to find persuasive, could support a finding that the pay policies originating from corporate headquarters in Mooresville, North Carolina, have had a disparate impact on women managers in the 46 states in which defendant does business.

Defendant argues that the court should not certify the class. In essence, defendant contends that while there were corporate policies, affidavits from 29 of its District Managers indicate that some 100,000 starting pay and pay increase decisions over the last 14 years were made in the field. It contends that those decisions had nothing to do with gender, but were based on the needs of the particular store, which in turn pivoted on the community that store served. At the hearing, defendant proffered a demonstrative "word cloud" exhibit drawn from those affidavits, which they contend was indicative [*4]  of pay decisions being made in the field. Defendant argues that the court should not certify this matter for resolution as a class because the criteria for pay are embedded in its district managers' subjective discretion.

Cases go up and the law comes down. Soon after this case was reassigned in 2011, this court granted defendant's Motion to Dismiss the Putative Class Action (#113) based on what the court then believed to be the clear mandate of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 564 U.S. 338, 131 S. Ct. 2541, 180 L. Ed. 2d 374 (2011). The appellate court determined, however, that this court had read Wal-Mart incorrectly and that the court should have allowed plaintiffs to amend their Complaint. It instructed this court to determine on remand whether "based on our interpretation of Wal—Mart, the proposed amended complaint satisfies the class certification requirements of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23." Scott v. Family Dollar Stores, Inc., 733 F.3d 105, 108 (4th Cir. 2013). For the reasons that follow, the court determines that the Amended Complaint satisfies the class certification requirements of Rule 23 when Wal-Mart is read in the manner provided by the appellate court.

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