Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer and private U.S. employer with over 1 million workers, is being sued by a group of women employees who are alleging discrimination. The women claim that Wal-Mart underpays female employees, allows hostile work environments, and denies equal promotion opportunities to women. Depending on which estimates you look at, there could be between 500,000 and 1 million women represented in the lawsuit, making it the largest class-action suit in history.
Class-action lawsuits are important legal tools that allow people to band together and sue as a group for the same reason. The employees in this case have argued that they qualify for class-action status because Wal-Mart stores had similar management policies. Two federal courts ruled that the lawsuit can proceed as a class action on behalf of all female workers potentially hurt by Wal-Mart’s practices since 2001. Wal-Mart appealed both decisions, and the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to take up the case a few weeks ago. Strategically, employers tend to not like class-action suits because they often result in bigger cases with potentially larger claims and steeper damages if employers are found liable. Employers would much prefer that each worker be forced to bring his or her own case, which would severely diminish the number of employees willing and able to bring lawsuits against employers.
The Supreme Court will not decide the merits of the women’s claims or Wal-Mart’s defense to the allegations of sex discrimination. Instead, the court will consider whether to uphold the lower courts’ rulings in allowing the lawsuit to move forward on behalf of such a large class of current and former employees from across the nation. This may sound like an obscure point, but it’s important. How the Supreme Court decides this case will set a significant precedent for future cases, determining which lawsuits can and cannot be filed on behalf of workers and under what circumstances employees would be allowed to band together to fight discrimination.
Remember, the Supreme Court decided against Lilly Ledbetter’s pay discrimination suit on similar administrative grounds and held that corporations should be treated as people in a way that supported corporations’ rights to unlimited political campaign spending. These decisions emphasized corporate rights over individual rights, and clearly the Supreme Court has established a tendency to side with businesses. A comparable ruling against Wal-Mart employees would be a devastating blow to everyday citizens’ abilities to fight discrimination.
In hearing this case, AAUW believes the Supreme Court should uphold the application of the established civil rules of procedures for class-action pay discrimination and Title VII claims. Indeed, the AAUW Legal Advocacy Fund will be looking for opportunities to help the Wal-Mart workers moving forward. LAF will work with the employees’ attorneys to file briefs in support of their case.
You can help by learning more about AAUW’s support of precedent-setting legal cases that affect the lives of women and girls and by donating to LAF.
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