What did the Supreme Court decide in the Wal-Mart case? And more importantly, how did it justify its decision? (HINT: the key word here is “commonality” (and how it related to “class-action lawsuit”). Try to understand what this legal terms means, as it is key to the court’s decision).

In the Wal-Mart v. Dukes case, the Supreme Court decided that the women who were suing Wal-Mart couldn’t move forward with their class-action lawsuit. The women claimed Wal-Mart discriminated against them in pay and promotions, but the Court said their situations were too different to combine into one case. The key issue was something called “commonality”, which means for a class action lawsuit to happen, the people suing need to have a shared, common issue. Since the women’s experiences varied like where they worked or who their manager was. The Court decided they didn’t have enough in common to join together in a single lawsuit because of that each woman’s case had to be handled separately.