The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of Wal-Mart in what was going to be the largest class action suit of all time, brought on by up to 1.5 million women against the corporation, the country’s largest employer, for discrimination.
A 5-4 vote determined that the suit could not go forward because the plaintiffs were unable to show that Wal-Mart had a common, chain-wide policy of discriminating against women.
+
+
Because individual store managers were the ones responsible for pay levels and promotions, Wal-Mart said, it wasn’t their overall fault. (It was just the individual fault of the bajillion employees who carried out sex discrimination locally in their own little area!)
This is a big “victory for Wal-Mart,” a company really in need of no additional victories, but also may help shield larger employers from similar claims in the future on anything claiming race/gender bias. From The Los Angeles Times:
Had civil rights lawyers succeeded in the case, they had hoped to bring other suits against large employers who allegedly relegate women or minorities to lower-paying jobs.
“In a company of Wal-Mart’s size and geographical scope, it is quite unbelievable that all managers would exercise their discretion in a common way without some common direction,” said Justice Antonin Scalia. Because class actions are suitable for resolving disputes that turn on a common issue, this lawsuit cannot go forward, Scalia said.
While the court’s liberals disagreed on this point, they agreed with Scalia that the class-action claim was flawed because it sought individual awards of back pay for the women. All nine justices said this class-action suit could not seek monetary damages for the women workers.
Scalia’s opinion strongly suggested that such claims cannot proceed as a single class-action suit unless the plaintiffs can point to a company policy of discriminating against certain employees.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had a partial dissent:
[Plaintiffs] allege that the company “[r]eli[es] on gender stereotypes in making employment decisions such as … promotion[s] [and] pay.” Wal-Mart permits those prejudices to infect personnel decisions, the plaintiffs contend, by leaving pay and promotions in the hands of “a nearly all male managerial workforce” using “arbitrary and subjective criteria.” Further alleged barriers to the advancement of female employees include the company’s requirement, “as a condition of promotion to management jobs, that employees be willing to relocate.” Absent instruction otherwise, there is a risk that managers will act on the familiar assumption that women, because of their services to husband and children, are less mobile than men.
Women fill 70 percent of the hourly jobs in the retailer’s stores but make up only “33 percent of management employees.” “[T]he higher one looks in the organization the lower the percentage of women.” The plaintiffs’ “largely uncontested descriptive statistics” also show that women working in the company’s stores “are paid less than men in every region” and “that the salary gap widens over time even for men and women hired into the same jobs at the same time.”
Along with Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Stephen G. Breyer did think the suit should have been allowed to proceed even if it didn’t lead to monetary values. So basically all the women thought it should go forward and the men did not. You can read more from both sides at Daily Kos.
Although this is a big win for Wal-Mart, it doesn’t take a stand on whether or not Wal-Mart is guilty of gender discrimination, only that these women can’t pursue a class-action suit together.
Daily Kos: “Bottom line: in Chief Justice Roberts’s Supreme Court, business wins again. And again.”
Plaintiffs: Betty Dukes of Pittsburgh; Deborah Gunter of Palm Springs; Christine Kwapnoski of Bay Point; and Edith Arena of Duarte. (Jacquelyn Martin, Associated Press / March 29, 2011)
THISMAKESMEANGRYUGH.
My thoughts exactly.
Same here, i can’t believe this, people say that we’re treated the same no matter what gender but i think their heads are up their asses if they don’t think women are being treated like this!
It’s a sad day for equality in the workplace and more specifically for about 1.6M women who work or have worked for Walmart.
What. Ughhhhh.
The inability of the Supreme Court to recognize this discrimination as systematic and pervasive is so frustrating.
I wonder if it’s less inability and more so refusal – refusal to challenge big business & the other special interests that run our country. Regardless, it’s definitely frustrating.
Notice that the justices appointed by republican presidents (Reagen, Bush I and Bush II) all ruled together in favor of Walmart and the justices appointed by democrats (Clinton and Obama) all dissented together.
…curiouser and curiouser…
very good observation…
Ugh, fuck this “corporations are people” Supreme Court.
this makes me so pissed off i can’t even see straight.
“[They] did think the suit should have been allowed to proceed even if it didn’t lead to monetary values.”
Class action lawsuits are rarely about monetary values and I doubt any of these women are looking for their $20-$200 cut of the pie.
They are, however, looking for social justice and, I assume, a precedent to ensure their daughters and granddaughters aren’t exploited by big business and the men who run them.
This, and the lack of ‘commonalities,’ is what makes this ruling completely absurd.
I hope these women can find justice through another medium…
AAARRRGGGHHH! It’s taking all my self-control right now to not just leave a reply to this that doesn’t consist of the word “FUCK” repeated about 6,000 times.
Wal-mart is so fucking evil. I can’t tell you how much I loathe living where I do at the moment. The nearest town is so small, Wal-mart is the only place to get a whole lot of things and I feel dirty every time I set foot in that store. We’re moving in a few weeks and I absolutely cannot wait to never shop in a Wal-mart again!
Maybe the Supreme Court was worried things would move up the food chain and a little looksie into gender policies way up at those levels would be taken…
Since Roberts took over as Chief Justice, the court has been all about big business.
Boooo
Just, fuck this.
x2
This pisses me off so fucking much. It’s not just about big business, which it’s for sure about, but it’s also that they are defanging the civil rights act.
Now it’s super hard (impossible?) to bring a class action against a super big business that gives local supervisors discretion in hiring and promotion which I would assume is like most (all?) big businesses. And without class action, much much harder to have this shit litigated, which is a central means of enforcing (and so also preventing) discrimination in employment. REALLY FUCKING BAD. Like really really really bad.