Summary of the Case and Brief

In a gender discrimination lawsuit against Microsoft, plaintiffs appeal the ruling of the U.S. District Court denying their class-action motion based on the reasoning that there were not strong enough similarities between the women’s claims to prove companywide bias practices. Amici argue that the district court erred when it ignored Appellant's submission of anecdotal evidence, in the form of eleven declarations from female employees and evidence of hundreds of internal complaints of gender bias, when considering its application for class certification.

Decision

The Supreme Court has held that anecdotal evidence like this can persuasively bring “the cold numbers convincingly to life” in a Title VII action and in treating the anecdotal evidence as statistical evidence, the district court failed to properly analyze whether the Appellant's submissions corroborated the existence of discrimination in light of the totality of the evidence.