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).

• In the Wal-Mart case, the Supreme Court decided they couldn’t bring a class-action lawsuit because their stories weren’t similar enough. The Court justified this by stating that the women didn’t prove there was a company-wide policy of discrimination. They believed that all the experiences that the women had were too different to be considered a problem. As well as nitpicking the discrimination policies and stating that not all Wal-Marts have the same policies therefore it couldn’t proceed as a class-action lawsuit.

In the Wal-Mart v. Dukes case, the Supreme Court decided against the female employees who were trying to sue Wal-Mart as a group (class-action lawsuit). The Court said the women didn’t have enough in common to sue together. The keyword here is “commonality.” For a class-action lawsuit to work, everyone in the group needs to have similar experiences. The Court found that the women’s experiences of alleged discrimination varied too much across different stores and managers. Because they couldn’t prove a company-wide policy of discrimination that affected everyone similarly, the Court ruled they couldn’t sue as a group. Each woman had to sue on her own if she chose to.

1. What was the decision of the Supreme Court in the Wal-Mart case?

The Supreme Court decided in Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes (2011) that the class-action lawsuit brought by about 1.5 million female employees could not go ahead as one class.

The women had complained that Wal-Mart was engaging in gender discrimination against them, paying them less and promoting them less than men. They wanted to sue as a class (a class-action suit), which allows numerous people who have the same complaints to pool their lawsuits into one big case.

2. How did the Court justify its ruling? What is “commonality”?

The Court struck out the action on the grounds of lack of “commonality” among the women’s claims.

Commonality requires all the people in a class-action lawsuit to all be confronted by the same legal issue—something that connects all their claims meaningfully together. The Court showed that the women could not demonstrate that there was some single company-wide policy that led to all of them being discriminated against equally.

Instead, Wal-Mart allowed individual pay and promotion decisions to be made by local managers. The Supreme Court suggested this meant the women’s experiences were too disparate from one another to be presented as one class.

Because of this, the case could not be addressed as one giant lawsuit, and the Court ruled in favor of Wal-Mart.

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).

-In Wal-Mart v. Dukes, the Supreme Court ruled that the intended group of female employees could not file a group-action case against Wal-Mart. The parties suing did not prove that all members of the group experienced the same injury or that a common law or actual issue was at the heart of all of their claims, the court declared. The Court indicated that an overall issue that may be resolved by the entire class is necessary for class approval. The Court found no single common policy that connected all of the claims because the alleged discrimination was based on judgments made by hundreds of different managers. As a result, the class action lawsuit was dropped.

The courts can usually better protect the rights of the individual compared to political institutions of government, such as Congress or the President or the Mayor, because they are removed from the political pressures that bind elected members. Judges do not feel subject to the need to get votes or to appease party interests. Therefore, they can remain unbiased and focus on constitutional principles and individual rights. The Supreme Court can ensure people’s rights even when the popular consensus or elected representatives hold a contrary view.

For example, the matter of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. While politicians may have been motivated by issues of national security and public opinion during the war, the Court, while initially affirming the internment in Korematsu v. United States (1944), had subsequent opportunity to revisit and hone its position towards individual rights in later decisions (albeit the Korematsu case itself was never technically overruled, but was subject to fervent criticism and overshadowed by later holdings). Earlier, in the recent past, Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) is a case in which the Court protected individual rights (same-sex marriage) against the majority of states and the then-prevailing public opinion. This indicates how the Court is ready to protect individuals even against the political tide.

On the other hand, elected government branches may avoid unpopular options because their survival is founded on popular favor and re-election. For instance, the majority of politicians may be reluctant to implement policies that protect minority groups or end racial discrimination if such actions are unpopular with a large portion of their constituents or interest groups sponsoring their campaigns. Thus, the Court has the unique advantage of being shielded from the pressure to respond to the moods of voters, and hence it is more likely to be effective at protecting individual rights, especially when the majority may not be in favor. On the other hand, elected government branches may avoid unpopular options because their survival is founded on popular favor and re-election. For instance, the majority of politicians may be reluctant to implement policies that protect minority groups or end racial discrimination if such actions are unpopular with a large portion of their constituents or interest groups sponsoring their campaigns. Thus, the Court has the unique advantage of being shielded from the pressure to respond to the moods of voters, and hence it is more likely to be effective at protecting individual rights, especially when the majority may not be in favor.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Wal-Mart v. Dukes (2011) came to the decision now to allow some 1.5 million female employees class action lawsuits to proceed. This was solely based on the legal idea of commonality, which requires that plaintiffs have enough legal and factual relationship in order to be regarded as a group. Justice Scalia, on behalf of the majority said that “without some glue holding the alleged reasons for all those decisions together,” there could be no clear way to answer the question of, “Why was I disfavored” for all plaintiffs at once (Tortorici). The Court discovered that each of the women who experienced discrimination were too different, being that pay and promotions were based on a single individual by various managers and not a single company policy. Finally, the Court ruled there was no apparent, common motive for the alleged gender discrimination of all the women, deeming their class action lawsuit unsuitable under legal standards. Dayna Tortorici argues, by redefining commonality so narrowly, “By stripping the Dukes plaintiffs of their technical, legal commonality, the Court had undercut something much more important” (Tortorici). This shows that the courts neglected to acknowledge the systemic discriminations because they focused too much on the legal procedures. 

Works Cited

Tortorici, Dayna. “Sex Class Action.” n+1, no. 14, Summer 2012,

https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-14/politics/sex-class/.

In the Wal-Mart case, the Supreme Court decided that the group of women suing the company couldn’t move forward as a class-action lawsuit. The Court said the main reason was because there wasn’t enough “commonality” among all their claims. In other words, the women had different experiences and reasons for why they believed they were treated unfairly, so their situations weren’t similar enough to be handled all together in one big case. The Court explained that for a class-action lawsuit to work, everyone’s claim needs to share a common issue that ties them closely together—kind of like how all members of a team have to be playing the same game, not just wearing the same jersey.

The Supreme Court’s decision in the Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes case (2011) was a major ruling concerning class-action lawsuits, particularly regarding the concept of commonality.

In the 2011 case Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, the Supreme Court ruled against a group of female employees who attempted to file a class-action lawsuit against Wal-Mart for alleged gender discrimination in pay and promotions. The women claimed that Wal-Mart’s corporate culture allowed managers to exercise discretion in a way that systematically disadvantaged female employees. They research to represent a nationwide class of 1.5 million women, arguing that they were all affected by the same discriminatory practices. 

The key issue in the case was whether the plaintiffs met the legal requirement of commonality, which is essential in class-action lawsuits. Commonality means that all members of the class must share a common question of law or fact that can be resolved in a single stroke. The Supreme Court, in a 5–4 decision written by Justice Scalia, found that the women did not demonstrate a common issue tying all their claims together. Since decisions about pay and promotions were made by thousands of different managers across various locations, the Court ruled there was no single policy of discrimination that applied uniformly to all the plaintiffs. 

The Court emphasized that without a unifying “glue” holding the claims together, a class-action suit could not move forward. Because of the lack of commonality, the lawsuit was deemed too broad and diverse to be handled as a class. This decision significantly raised the bar for certifying class-action lawsuits, especially in employment discrimination cases, by requiring stronger evidence that the entire group suffered the same harm in the same way. 

In the Wal-Mart case, the Supreme Court decided that the group of women who sued Wal-Mart for discrimination could not move forward as a single class-action lawsuit. The Court justified its decision by saying that the women did not show enough “commonality” meaning they didn’t have enough in common to be treated as one group for the lawsuit. The Court explained that, for a class action lawsuit to happen, everyone in the group must have the same legal issue in a clear way. In this case, the experiences of the women were too different from each other, so the Court said they couldn’t combine all their claims into one big lawsuit.