The Supreme Court rejected a mammoth class-action lawsuit charging sex discrimination at Wal-Mart Stores Inc on Monday in a ruling that could affect major cases in other industries.
The justices unanimously overturned a U.S. appeals court ruling that more than a million female employees nationwide could join in the lawsuit accusing Wal-Mart of paying women less and giving them fewer promotions and seeking billions of dollars.
The Supreme Court agreed with the giant American retailer that the class-action certification violated federal rules for such lawsuits.
It accepted Wal-Mart’s argument that the female employees in different jobs at 3,400 different stores nationwide and with different supervisors do not have enough in common to be lumped together in a single class-action lawsuit.
The ruling was a setback for women’s groups, which have said a decision for the company could signal a significant retreat for women’s rights in the workplace.
It represented a major victory for Wal-Mart, which has also faced other legal battles, including an attempt to unionize and to block the giant retailer from opening stores in New York and other places.
Actually, this isnt’ a setback for anything. It merely reinforces the notion that a class-action has to have a class to proceed and that if you try to get one done with a giant broad-spectrum class, you won’t succeed.
The court pretty much ruled that merely being a woman working at Wal-Mart, something that 70% of the employed population of the company is, doesn’t give you class status and that the class was overly broad to fall into the guidelines for a class-action lawsuit, something every single person I know with any legal experience has said.
Activist implications not withstanding, and merits of the case notwithstanding, this was the right decision, and every justice agreed with the actual decision (although Sotomayor and others argued the method used for the class distinction, they still concurred with the decision).
In other words, if these folks would like to sue Wal-Mart, they have to do it individually or form a class with similar situations and sue in a class action suit. The case cannot be decided as is.
Doesn’t sound like a setback to me; it sounds like they left the door wide open for people to sue, just not as one giant class.