Supreme Court of the United States, 490 U.S. 755 (1989)
Martin v. Wilks is a landmark Supreme Court decision at the intersection of civil procedure and employment discrimination law.
Whether individuals who were not parties to prior Title VII litigation and related consent decrees are precluded from bringing a subsequent lawsuit challenging employment actions taken pursuant to those decrees, on the ground that they failed to intervene in the earlier litigation.
A person cannot be bound by a judgment in litigation to which they were not a party and in which they were not adequately represented, absent recognized exceptions (such as class actions with adequate representation, privity, or statutory preclusion). The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure do not impose an affirmative duty on potential plaintiffs to intervene in another's lawsuit; rather, parties seeking a judgment with preclusive effect must join necessary persons under Rule 19 or otherwise ensure adequate representation. Consent decrees, while binding on the parties and enforceable as judgments, do not automatically bar nonparties from mounting collateral challenges to actions taken under those decrees.
No. Nonparties to the original litigation and consent decrees are not precluded from subsequently challenging employment decisions taken to comply with those decrees. Failure to intervene in the earlier cases does not bar their claims.
Martin v. Wilks is pivotal for understanding nonparty preclusion, consent decrees, and the strategic use of joinder and intervention. It reinforced that judgments generally bind only parties and their privies and that courts and litigants must affirmatively bring in affected stakeholders if they want their settlements to be broadly preclusive. In employment discrimination practice, Wilks initially exposed employers acting under remedial decrees to suits by nonparties alleging reverse discrimination, complicating the administration of race-conscious remedies. Congress partially abrogated Wilks in the Civil Rights Act of 1991 by adding 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(n), which limits collateral challenges by persons who had actual notice of a proposed judgment or consent decree and a reasonable opportunity to object, or whose interests were adequately represented. For law students, the case is a touchstone on the limits of res judicata, the proper allocation of burdens under Rules 19 and 24, and the policy tension between finality of settlements and individual rights to a day in court.