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.

Question 1

According to this week reading the US Supreme Court decided on the case brought before it, class action lawsuit, Betty Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. The lawsuit denunciates Wal-Mart Stores of sex discrimination alleges that female employees are denied advancement and training opportunities, with less compensation for comparable work performed by male counterpart. Dukes claims the retail giant discriminate on the basis of sex in pay and promotions, in violation of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The lawsuit further alleges that female employees are directed to lower wage departments while being subjected to a hostile sexual work environment with retaliation when an attempt is made to correct sex discrimination. 

The case was slow moving as it made its way through the federal court system for approximately ten years. The US Supreme Court decided to determine whether 1.5 million female employees of the giant retailer can pursue job discrimination accusations in one lawsuit or should the file have divided against individual stores. The case was ultimately argued before the Supreme Court as the largest employment class-action lawsuit in the history of the nation.

The US Supreme Court ruled unanimously on the matter of classification vis-à-vis back pay. Under Civil Procedure Rule 23, specifies what kinds of relief classes Dukes could seek. The women in Dukes file a “b (2)” class seeking monetary relief as a “b(3)” class, as consumer class action generally do. As a civil rights case suing under Title VII, Dukes was squarely b (2).  The court ruled that the women’s further claim for back-pay would result into millions possibly billions of dollars in wages withheld countrywide, this could only be in a b (3) claim. The misclassification created a setback due to the class status.

Secondly, was the question of “commonality” which was more contentious, as the court making it central to its ruling. The ruling was split 5-4 decision delivered by Antonin Scalia, the Court ruled that the class represented in Dukes also failed to meet Rule 23’s commonality requirement—that there be “questions of law or fact” common to the class. In the decision Scalia reasoned that to claim “commonality” a class must not only share a common problem, but also a common solution to that problem—one that would compensate all members equally in a single stroke.

Due to the fact that all 1.5 million Wal-Mart female employees were not all denied the same promotion, pay raise, insulted, belittled, or impeded by the same manager in the same store, they could not legitimately litigate as one case.

Ginsburg in her dissent stated “‘discretionary employment practices’ can give rise to Title VII claims, not only when such practices are motivated by discriminatory intent, but also when they produce discriminatory results.”

“Without some glue holding the alleged reasons for all those decisions together,” Scalia said, “it will be impossible to say that examination of all the class members’ claims for relief will produce a common answer to the crucial question, why was I disfavored.” In agreement were Alito, Roberts, Thomas, and Kennedy. Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Stephen Breyer joined Ginsburg in her dissent.