The ruling of Walmart versus Duke’s was unable to bring a victory towards the female employees that brought the case to court. An issue of “commonality” emerged and heavily swayed their ruling. The Supreme Court denied it to agree any commonality within the participants or any given solution due to the class action lawsuits primary issue at large. The Supreme Court do 9 to 8 dollars Walmart employees as a distinct class that was entirely insecure in their job environment. The kicker was truly the size of the class action lawsuit with millions of women included as plaintiffs.

The Supreme Court ruled in Walmart V. Dukes that a class-action lawsuit against Walmart for its treatment of female employees could not be brought. The issue of “commonality” influenced their judgment. The Supreme Court declined to recognize any commonality among the participants or any remedy due to the class-action lawsuit’s breadth and scope. The Supreme Court refused to acknowledge Walmart employees as a distinct class whose job condition is inherently insecure in this sense.

These questions are based on the “Sex Class Action” article:

1. 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).

Dukes v. Walmart was a case that was filed because the company discriminated against women employees within their pay, alongside promotions. Betty Dukes and 1.5 million other women wanted to file a class action lawsuit against Walmart in order to get monetary compensation. The Supreme Court ruled in Walmart’s favor  and said that Betty and the other women did not have enough in common to constitute a “class”, therefore could not file a class action lawsuit. The Supreme Court ruled 5–4 that they could not proceed with any kind of class action suit because of the lack of commonality. Because the 1.5 million female Wal-Mart employees were not all denied the same promotion, the same pay raise, or insulted, belittled, or obstructed by the same manager in the same store, their cases could not legitimately be litigated all at once

In the case of Wal-Mart the Supreme Court ruled in Wal-Mart’s favor because the believed that the plaintiffs did not have enough in common to constitute as a class for a class action suit.

The Supreme ruled in favor of Wal-Mart in the Betty Dukes v. Wal-Mart case. The Supreme Court decided unanimously that the 1.5 million women could not be endorsed as a class in a class-action lawsuit. Class-action is a law that falls under Rule 23 of the Civil Procedure, which specifies, among other things, what kind of relief classes can seek. For a case such as that magnitude, it had to meet the commonality requirement, which means that the case had to provide or share common questions of law. Thus, failing to meet the requirement for Rule 23 commonality. The commonality concept says that “a class must share not only a common problem but also share a common solution. The court argued that not all the 1.5 million women were not denied the same promotion, increased wages, insults, or belittled by the same manager in the same store across the country. Therefore, their cases could not be legitimately prosecuted at the same time or at once.

1. 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).

The Walmart case is considered the largest class action lawsuit in American. It is related to 1.5 million of American women workers who sued Walmart stores for discrimination after a wage gaps had been emerged between male and female. The supreme court had decided to end the case in favor of Walmart justifying its position by claiming that the class represented in Dukes failed to meet Rule 23’s commonality requirement as it was mentioned in the reading “ the 1.5 million female Wal-Mart employees were not all denied the same promotion, the same pay raise, or insulted, belittled, or obstructed by the same manager in the same store, their cases could not legitimately be litigated all at once.” In other words since there is different circumstances, places and managers the class could not be identified as a class action lawsuit since it does meet the its requirements.   

These questions are based on the “Sex Class Action” article:

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).

The Supreme Court decided Wal-Mart won in this case, even though they class-action lawsuit, in law they don’t share the same commonality, due to the reason that those women were in the different Wal-Mart, not in the same market, under the same manager.

In a case that involved over 1.5 million workers against Walmart, the Supreme Court ruled out that Walmart oppressed women, besides it was proven that there was issue on sex discrimination, where men were paid more salaries than women. The court decided that the massive sex discrimination against Walmart was evident, however it was not to proceed as a class action. The court decision was justified after evidence presented before the court proved that a significant number of women working at Walmart could not be certified as valid class of plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit.