Wal-Mart’s legal team and lawyers representing more than a million women across the country went head-to-head before the Supreme Court in March. Today, the nine Justices handed the company a victory.
In a unanimous ruling, the Court said the 1.5-million plaintiff class action suit is too large to proceed. That reverses a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that the case could go ahead.
The case is the largest sex discrimination suit in history. Here’s the rundown on the facts from a March report by NPR’s Nina Totenberg:
The class action lawsuit was filed against Wal-Mart 10 years ago on behalf of a half-dozen female workers and 1.5 million other women in similar situations. A federal judge, after hearing evidence, certified the class to proceed to trial, and Wal-Mart appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, contending that the case is simply too big to be handled in one fell swoop…[Plaintiffs say] that when the case was filed 10 years ago, women held two-thirds of the lowest-level hourly jobs and only one-third of the management jobs; and that women were paid on average $1.16 less per hour than men in the same jobs, despite having more seniority and higher performance ratings.”
Wal-Mart has rejected the claims as well as argued that the case was too big. On that last score, the Court ruled with them.
But as the AP reports, today’s ruling may not mean the case is over:
Now, the handful of women who brought the lawsuit may pursue their claims on their own, with much less money at stake and less pressure on Wal-Mart to settle.
Read the ruling here.
