Supreme Court Limits Wal-Mart Sex Bias Case

Source: ABC News

The Supreme Court has ruled for Wal-Mart in its fight to block a massive sex discrimination lawsuit on behalf of women who work there.

Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=13884356

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Breaking, so short article. Unanimous decision. Click on the link to read the rest, just a few paragraphs.

PB

He probably got a pretty penny from Wal-Mart 1st.

do you suppose the other 7 Justices got for voting the way they did in this UNANIMOUS decision?

He's so cheap he does it for free--like the other conservatives.

Stupid isn't one of them.

No points for guessing the vote breakdown.

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/20/toobin-high-court-addressed-only-class-size-not-discrimination-in-wal-mart-suit/

The Supreme Court on Monday put the brakes on a massive job discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart. The suit was the largest class-action suit in U.S. history – and, says Jeffrey Toobin, CNN's senior legal analyst, therein lies the problem.

snip

He said the class-action status – potentially involving hundreds of thousands of female workers – was too large.

"The Supreme Court has basically said this is too big a case," Toobin said. "The facts are so different regarding each of the plaintiffs that it’s not fair to Wal-Mart to lump them into one case."

The decision in Wal-Mart Stores Inc. v. Dukes (10-277) did not represent the usual political divisions within the high court, Toobin said. The nine justices simply thought the class was too big under the rules governing class-action suits.

"The decision was 5-4, in part, but it was basically unanimous that the case had to be thrown out," Toobin said, adding that the court did not rule on whether Wal-Mart had ever discriminated.......................

snip

....Obama appointing two Liberals to the Supreme Court has really paid-off for Wal-Marts' female employees....

To take a concept from the opposition: Starve the Beast!

like is the case in quite a few communities?

And don't mention Costco--very few people need a whole case of toilet paper. I don't even know where I'd put it--my place is pretty small.

Source: CNN

The Supreme Court put the brakes on a massive job discrimination lawsuit against mega-retailer Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., saying sweeping class-action status that could potentially involve hundreds of thousands of current and former female workers was simply too large.

The ruling Monday was a big victory for the nation's largest private employer, and the business community at large.

The high-profile case– perhaps the most closely watched of the high court's term– is among the most important dealing with corporate versus worker rights that the justices have ever heard, and could eventually impact nearly every private employer, large and small.

The case is Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes (10-277).

Read more: http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/20/supreme-court-rules-for-wal-mart-in-massive-job-discrimination-lawsuit/

The Supreme Court is not considering the merits of the Walmart suit -- whether there actually was any discrimination. Instead it is deciding whether the women should be allowed to sue as a class -- which would include 1.5 million plaintiffs.

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Consumer-Corner/2011/06/19/Consumer-Corner-Prof-says-emphasis-on-price-allowed-discrimination-to-flourish-at-Walmart/UPI-95971308472260/#ixzz1PpKAwUfo

WHAT A CROCK

grievance from those women affected

That is why all the justices rejected it


This does NOT invalidate those women who have a case, and they can and should bring suit

It rules on grouping all the cases in the same commonality

The more clients, the more likely you will be able to retain an attorney or firm who can afford to take on a giant corporation. If the corporation can pick off the individual plaintiffs one by one, there is virtually no chance against the unending delays and legal games corporations can play to ruin their opponents.

That's why you always hear the GOP complaining about "plaintiff's attorneys" and not "corporate attorneys."

The Supreme Court didn't just give Walmart a pass - Monsanto and Alcoa will love this.

Is it fascism yet?

the decision says.

You do know it was a 9-0 decision?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-20/wal-mart-wins-u-s-supreme-court-gender-discrimination-class-action-case.html

The court ruled unanimously on some aspects of the case and divided on others. Four justices -- Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan -- said they would have returned the case to a lower court and let the workers try to press ahead with a class action under a different legal theory.

“The court, however, disqualifies the class from the starting gate,” Ginsburg wrote.



Am I surprised? No. I'll be surprised if any of the plaintiffs see a dime ever. In fact, Wally will probably turn around and sue THEM for court costs and so on, further chilling any more lawsuits of this type against a big company, ever.


Best government money can buy.

The court ruled unanimously Monday that the lawsuit against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. cannot proceed as a class action, reversing a decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The lawsuit could have involved up to 1.6 million women, with Wal-Mart facing potentially billions of dollars in damages.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts-law/supreme-court-blocks-huge-sex-bias-lawsuit-by-women-who-work-at-wal-mart/2011/06/20/AGIbxpcH_story.html?hpid=z1

to collect without documentation

The lawyers did this very badly.

This does NOT invalidate those women who have a case, and they can and should bring suit

It rules on grouping all the cases in the same commonality

8-0

With the obvious vote breakdown.

bringing the case again with a more narrow focus - don't know why their attorneys did not see this coming, the case was way too wide and covering too much. Also said that each WalMart has the discretion to set their own rules, handy for WalMart huh?

from Wal-Mart for voting in their favor?

IT does NOT invalidate those women who have a case, and they can and should bring suit

i was replying to post 7 in respect to clarence thomas(who deserve NO respect). it wasn't a 5-4 decision.

While I hate the greedy anti-worker walmart corporate overlords forcing them out of business will mean millions more in lost jobs. What we need to do is to get the unions in there to represent the workers. We need card check to make sure the employees are not being itimidated by the corporate overlord pigs. Once the unions are there they can help the employees force the corporate pigs to pay living wages and benefits and work to take the 100s of millions of profits away from the greedy wall street shills and perhaps force all walmarts to be employee owned and operated.

The ruling doesn't harm their ability to sue, they just need to break the lawsuits into smaller, more accurate groups.

Varying levels of harm were inflicted, it is not appropriate to lump them all together. This is not a dismissal in the sense they cannot sue again.

This is not 'in wal-mart's favor', technically, since the various suits will hang over the company for a lot longer, and will likely impact stock price/etc for a long time to come.

Saying that it can't possibly be expected to defend against all these disparate suits, and request relief from the courts to consolidate several of the suits, lumping in big ticket claimants with small dollar claimants, then proposing a global settlement that includes attorney fees, reducing the pot of money available to all claimants. Meanwhile, the employees that were screwed out of pay and benefits will just keep getting older and poorer.

A jolly game. Hey, have you seen the latest Wal-Mart ad about the woman who started working there when she was 19 and preggers, and now just 14 years later is a store manager? It's the feel-good story of the year!

"Meanwhile, the employees that were screwed out of pay and benefits will just keep getting older and poorer."


at some very real point in time, justice delayed is truly justice denied

Fucked up no matter how you measure it.

SCOTUS smacked down the 9th circuit pretty hard here.

If you join with others having a similar complaint you may not be permitted to bring suit as a group.

If you try to bring suit on your own you may not be able to find an attorney who will take the case on a contingency (they speculate they either will not prevail or will not recover enough $$$) or or you can't afford to hire legal counsel.

My guess is that the answer is next to no one.

and it was better than the AP one as it explained why the justices ruled as they did and that they only ruled unanimously on some parts of the case and not all of them which the AP article omitted.

for an Internet poster to be able to comment on a thing without having to
read the actual thing being commented on...

As the courts become increasingly more corporate-friendly, workers need unions to protect their rights.

to be held accountable.

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are pigs. But I alway expect them to be wrong. And they are wrong!

You are good with this 'in your face' wage, training and advancement discrepancy?

And the liberals didn't agree with the conservative majority on much of the decision.

Oh, yeah, his appointees just take their lead and vote the way Roberts wants them to. The Supreme Court should not have lifetime appointments. 8 year term limits. This is bullshit.

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/10-277.pdf

...or at least an accurate article about it.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SUPREME_COURT_WAL_MART_DISCRIMINATION?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

You might even want to get a lawyer to help you understand it. I recommend Norman Goldman http://www.normangoldman.com/. He can dumb it down for you. The decision essentially reverses the entire rationale for ALL class action lawsuits. Instead of looking for commonalities between plaintiffs, now judges should be looking for differences to split apart plaintiffs. It is much easier for corporate America to wage a war of attrition against pesky little lawsuits, rather than fight off big, well organized class action suits.

Contrary to the predictions of some here.

They didn't take away the women's right to sue their particular case, just took away the circus of a class action suit where each woman's situation, superiors, skills, job description, type of alleged discrimination were entirely different.

If you were the defendant and you were sued by everyone you once wronged in your life (from taking the bigger half of a cookie to failing to yield to a motorist to driving a motorcycle loudly at night to parking while occupying 1 foot of someone's driveway,) as a joint "class", would that be fair?

I am sometimes astounded by the tendency on DU to immediately blame the corporations without even studying the issue.

I am not saying (and nor did the SCOTUS) that Walmart didn't do anything wrong. They might have. However, making it an "impossible to defend" class action is just not fair. This is not a case of some drug causing multiple side effects in a bunch of patients or some toy whose manufacturing defect injures a bunch of kids.

now I see why.

Somebody should set up a do it yourself in small claims court web site. With all of the necessary paperwork and legal advice and prompting.

So justice won't be done in the vast majority of the cases.

Class actions help the plaintiffs, not the defendants. That's why Wal-Mart fought so hard to deny certification in this case.

Walmart can't ask for them to be combined after their appeal. The legal costs for Walmart will be considerably above the awards. The sheer number of cases will swamp the courts. If there was a web site to provide support, everybody could represent themselves. That would slow things down even more.

so that every corporate business must be employee owned and operated so all share the profits equally instead of fat greedy overlord fucks at the top sucking the life out of the poor workers barely scratching out minimum wage. Everyone deserves a living wage.