On August 2, 2013, a California federal judge issued an order rejecting a class certification motion in the Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. sex discrimination suit. The motion was denied for reasons similar to those cited by the Supreme Court when it rejected the plaintiffs original class certification attempt in 2011.

The plaintiffs sued Wal-Mart in 2001 under Title VII, initially seeking to certify a class of almost 1.5 million female employees of Wal-Mart who they allege were discriminated against in pay and promotion decisions by management. The district court granted the motion, and the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed. The Supreme Court reversed, however, finding that the plaintiffs failed under FRCP 23(a)(2). The court held that the plaintiffs could not identify a "common question" tying together all of the members of the class in a way that could ensure that all of their claims could be litigated in a single lawsuit.

The plaintiffs returned to the district court with a pared-down class of about 150,000 women who worked in three of the retailer's California regions. Like the first class certification motion, this motion alleged disparate treatment claims that Wal-Mart operated under a general policy of discrimination. They also again presented disparate impact claims, alleging that specific employment practices that guided local managers' discretion led to pay and promotion discrepancies for women. The court rejected both of these theories.

Regarding disparate treatment, mirroring the Supreme Court in the first class certification motion, the district court found that the plaintiffs failed in their second attempt to show that Wal-Mart operated under a general policy of discrimination. The evidence presented showed no statistically significant disparity among promotions in two of the three regions, and almost three-quarters of the individual stores showed no disparity in pay. The plaintiffs also presented evidence that Wal-Mart's CEO expressed discriminatory views toward women in notes from a 2004 meeting, but the court found this evidence to be ambiguous and to fall short of significant proof.

Regarding disparate impact, the Supreme Court did not accept the plaintiffs' argument that Wal-Mart's practice of delegating discretion over the challenged pay and promotion decision to local managers resulted in a disparate impact on women, because the plaintiffs failed to identify specific practices. The plaintiffs attempted to fix this shortcoming in the motion by enumerating the practices that led to the disparities. Regarding the promotion disparity claims, the plaintiffs cited the following specific practices:

Responding to the pay claims, the plaintiffs cited Wal-Mart's Field Compensation Guidelines, which enumerated criteria that managers should consider in making pay decisions. These attempts fell short, however, as the district court found the practices either did not apply across the board to the entire class over the class period, or merely amounted to the "delegated discretion" argument that the Supreme Court already rejected.