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).

In Dukes case, a group of women who alleged discrimination on the basis of gender filed a suit against Wal-Mart. The action was then changed to a class action, with all women represented by the original small group of women who sued the company. And this class was the largest ever class. In Walmart case the Supreme Court decide that the women’s additional demand for back pay which would amount billions of dollars in withheld wages to women across the country could only belong in a b(3) claim. There was a mis qualification under the class that they filed the complaints under b2 claim. The monetary award in this case could not be applied to all members of the class. Thus this rule does not allow class certification in this situation. Therefore, they were denied the back pay due to wrong classification of the lawsuit.

Second, they make commonality the center of their decision. Commonality means a series of same characteristics that a group endorse. The Court lays down a commonality criteria for class certification, under which more than one million women with a common employer will have to prove they were all subject to the same discriminatory employment policy, to be certified as a class. 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. A class action is an exception, and it must be justified by the fact that a class representative must be part of the class in fact, interest and injury. It is like all the female in this class action did meet all the same characteristics for this litigation process.