Retail giant Wal-Mart is a big winner as the U.S. Supreme Court issues decisions on employment discrimination, access to attorneys, and greenhouse gas regulation.
The largest employment discrimination case in American history came to a sudden halt today as the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the plaintiff’s claims for monetary relief had been improperly advanced. The court was more closely split (5-4) along ideological lines as to whether the plaintiffs in the case—Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v Dukes et al.—had been able to show a broad pattern of sex discrimination attributable to a “general policy of discrimination.”
“On the facts of this case,” wrote Justice Antonin Scalia for the majority, “the conceptual gap between an individual’s discrimination claim and ‘the existence of a class of persons who have suffered the same injury, must be bridged by ‘significant proof that an employer operated under a general policy of discrimination.’ Such proof is absent here. Wal-Mart’s announced policy forbids sex discrimination, and the company has penalties for denials of equal opportunity.”
This part of Justice Scalia’s opinion was pointedly criticized in a dissent by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who noted that while women make up 70 percent of Wal-Mart’s employees nationwide, only a third of the company’s management employees are women. Moreover, she pointed out, there is a discernible salary gap between men and women in every region that the company operates in and that the salary gap actually gets wider the more years men and women hold management positions.
The class action case against Wal-Mart was brought by several company employees including Betty Dukes of Pittsburg, California where she still works as a Wal-Mart greeter.
While today’s Supreme Court decision torpedos the class action suit, it won’t prevent women like Dukes from proceeding with individual causes of action against the retail giant.
U.S. Supreme Court
Still, it was hardly good news for advocates of equal opportunity in employment.
Today’s ruling is a “devastating decision undoing the rights of millions of women across the country to come together and hold their employers accountable for their discriminatory practices,” National Women’s Law Center Co-President Marcia D. Greenberger told the Washington Post. “The court has told employers that they can rest easy, knowing that the bigger and more powerful they are, the less likely their employees will be able to join together to secure their rights.”
In other decisions announced today, the Supreme Court rejected the common law nuisance claims filed by several states and non-profit groups that were aimed at utilities operating coal-fired power plants, and determined that indigent defendants do not have a right to counsel in civil contempt proceedings that could result in their incarceration.
–Tim Connor
