{"id":11932,"date":"2025-11-23T23:59:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T04:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0502-fall-2025-introduction-to-american-government\/?p=11932"},"modified":"2025-11-23T21:52:39","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T02:52:39","slug":"discussion-board-12-1-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0502-fall-2025-introduction-to-american-government\/2025\/11\/23\/discussion-board-12-1-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Discussion Board 12.1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What did the Supreme Court decide in the Wal-Mart case? And more importantly,\u00a0<em>how did it justify its decision<\/em>? (HINT: the key word here is \u201ccommonality\u201d (and how it related to \u201cclass-action lawsuit\u201d). Try to understand what this legal terms means, as it is key to the court\u2019s decision).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to block the massive class-action lawsuit brought by over 1.5 million women against Wal-Mart for sex discrimination in pay and promotions. The Court held that the proposed class failed the &#8220;commonality&#8221; requirement under Federal Rule 23(a)(2), which demands common questions of law or fact whose answers will drive the litigation for all members. Justice Scalia wrote that Wal-Mart\u2019s policy of giving local managers broad discretion over pay and promotions provided no &#8220;glue&#8221; linking millions of individual decisions; without a company-wide discriminatory policy, no single trial could resolve the core question &#8220;Why was I disfavored?&#8221; for everyone at once. The Court also noted the plaintiffs improperly sought monetary back pay under a rule designed only for injunctive relief. This lack of commonality destroyed the class certification and forced each woman to sue individually, shielding large employers from nationwide discrimination challenges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What did the Supreme Court decide in the Wal-Mart case? And more importantly,\u00a0how did it justify its decision? (HINT: the key word here is \u201ccommonality\u201d (and how it related to \u201cclass-action lawsuit\u201d). Try to understand what this legal terms means, as it is key to the court\u2019s decision). The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to block&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10945,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"portfolio_post_id":0,"portfolio_citation":"","portfolio_annotation":"","openlab_post_visibility":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discussion-board-12-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0502-fall-2025-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0502-fall-2025-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0502-fall-2025-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0502-fall-2025-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10945"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0502-fall-2025-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11932"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0502-fall-2025-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11933,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0502-fall-2025-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11932\/revisions\/11933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0502-fall-2025-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0502-fall-2025-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0502-fall-2025-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}