1-The Supreme Court decided in favor of Wal-Mart because the plaintiff lacked commonality as a requirement of Rule 23 to be filed a class action law suit. The 1.5 million women expressed too many varying experiences to be justified meeting this commonality requirement. There was not a strong “glue” according to Scalia to hold the argument of the women together against the company. The evidence was clear but had no back up with laws that proved this perspective and ultimately led to the case ruling in favor of the company. Which was unfortunate due to the many different forms of evidence brought to attention. Women being unfairly paid compared to men in accordance to several studies done.

1. What did the Supreme Court decide in the new Wal-Mart case? And more importantly how did it justify its decision?

The Supreme Court decided that the women’s class action lawsuit was misclassified. The Antonin Scalia decided that in order to win a civil suit the plaintiffs must have a common problem, but also a common solution to that problem. There were millions of female Walmart employees who were not denied the same pay raise and promotion, or insulted, belittled, or obstructed by the same manager. The Supreme Court justified its decision by stating that the plaintiffs didn’t have enough “glue” to litigate their cases all at once.

In the Wal-Mart stores , Inc. v. Dukes case of 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against allowing a class-action suit alleging gender discrimination by female employees on grounds of non-compliance with the rule of commonality in the law. In a class-action suit, according to Rule 23(a)(2) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, members must have common questions of fact or of law central to their claims. The Court, in a 5-4 decision authored by Justice Scalia, determined that the plaintiffs who argued Wal-Mart’s decentralization of corporate culture resulted in gender discrimination in pay and promotion—could not establish such commonality. The Court’s basis was that because Wal-Mart entrusted local managers with broad discretion over employment issues, there was no uniform company-wide policy or practice leading to discrimination. Without a central system (e.g., discriminatory corporate policy), the alleged harms were too scattered throughout the decisions of thousands of individual managers to be a common legal question. The ruling reinterpreted commonality as demanding a certain, tangible policy or practice that applied to all class members in the same way, rather than statistical disparities from decentralized decision making.

This raised the bar for certification of mass class-action cases, particularly employment discrimination cases, by demanding plaintiffs demonstrate systematic bias arises from a coordinated corporate act, and not from managers’ subjective decisions. Justice Ginsburg, dissenting, refuted that Wal-Mart’s delegation of free-wheeling discretion to managers was a policy supporting bias with a gender differential footing nationwide. But the majority dismissed that as too broad. The decision significantly narrowed the scope of class-action lawsuits, making it harder for large groups to sue over systemic inequalities without direct proof of a centralized discriminatory policy.

1. In the case Dukes v. Wal-Mart, the Supreme Court ruled against over one million women, deciding that they could not proceed with a single class-action lawsuit over gender-based employment discrimination. The Court argued that the women did not meet the legal requirement of “commonality”, which means they failed to show that Wal-Mart had a general policy that led to the discrimination of all of them in the same way. The women all worked in different stores under different managers, so the Court argued that their experiences were too different to be treated as one whole case. This use of “commonality” made it almost impossible for large groups of workers to hold corporations accountable for acts of systemic discrimination.

1. Gender is a societal label that categorizes individuals as either “boy” or “girl,” whereas sex relates to biology, encompassing hormones and physical characteristics. Gender involves gender identity, which is how individuals perceive themselves in relation to societal norms. As we develop conscious thoughts, we may find ourselves feeling different from these established norms, which is part of our self-identity in terms of gender.

• Moreover, gender exists on a spectrum. A person who identifies as cisgender aligns with the societal expectations of their biological sex, both mentally and physically. In contrast, being transgender means that an individual feels a disconnection between their internal sense of identity and their assigned sex at birth.

• Gender expression refers to how individuals convey their perceived gender through actions, clothing, and pronouns.

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 relates to “class-action lawsuit”). Try to understand what this legal term means, as it is key to the court’s decision).

*The Supreme Court ruled in Walmart v. Dukes that the women were not permitted to pursue a class-action lawsuit. The main reason was the absence of “commonality”—the requirement that every member of the class is affected by the same policy in the same way. The Court defended its ruling by pointing out that Walmart’s organizational design allowed managers a great deal of latitude in determining salaries and promotions, making the discrimination allegations too diverse to handle as a single case. The lawsuit was based on numerous individual decisions made by various managers rather than a single company-wide policy.

Being a women sometimes you realize that being a women will be a setback but it’s up to you how you find your way around things and for them to work in your favor because as women that’s a sacrifice we have to make. Whether it’s judgment based on what we wear and how it fits our body or simply the fact being a women means “your not as strong as a man”.

Although over a million women participate in class action lawsuit against Walmart the Supreme Court refused to see gender as the main factor of the case based on the legal technicalities and how class action lawsuits work. The Court argued that the women’s experiences were too different to be treated as a single group and they didn’t provide evidence based on the company as a whole showing gender discrimination or any description policies against women so they refused to apply gender in as factor in the case. The women lacked the ability to think outside the box within the case they all were set on solely gender biases oppose to looking at the patterns of this behavior instead of focusing on the decisions of every Walmart manager, this simply made it easier for the court to dismiss the those factors. Essentially, legal procedures are more of a narrow view of what counts as “proof” made it easier for the Court to ignore the bigger picture, more obvious problem of systemic sexism. The lack of proper information & the usage off the factors of the case was why things were not working in their favor. When you bring something to court you have to have proof that is a factor of evidence with your words.

In the Supreme Court case Wal-Mart Stores Inc v Dukes, decided in 2011, the justices ruled against allowing what would have been the largest class action lawsuit in U.S. history. The case was brought by around 1.5 million women who worked at Walmart and alleged that they faced gender discrimination in pay and promotions. The key issue in the case was whether these women could be treated as a single class for the purpose of a class action lawsuit. The Court ultimately said no, deciding that the group lacked what’s known as “commonality,” a legal requirement that all members of a class share common questions of law or fact.

The plaintiffs argued that Walmart had a corporate culture that permitted discrimination to flourish, and that the company’s policy of giving local managers discretion over hiring and promotion led to unfair treatment of women throughout the organization. They claimed that even though individual decisions were made by different managers, there was still a general pattern of discrimination that could be linked back to Walmart’s broader corporate policies. They used statistical data and expert testimony to show patterns of pay disparity and promotion gaps between men and women.

However, the Supreme Court disagreed. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, said that because each employment decision was made at the discretion of individual managers, and there was no clear company-wide policy requiring or encouraging discrimination, the case did not meet the standard for class certification. In other words, just because many women may have experienced discrimination, that didn’t mean they all experienced the same kind of discrimination in the same way or for the same reason. That lack of a shared, central issue meant they could not proceed as a single class under the law.

The ruling had major implications for class action lawsuits going forward. It made it much harder for large groups of employees to bring discrimination cases against big corporations unless they could point to a specific, company-wide policy or practice that harmed everyone in the same way. It also highlighted how difficult it is to hold companies accountable for systemic discrimination when the discrimination is carried out through decentralized decision-making. In the end, the Court’s decision in Wal-Mart v Dukes emphasized that without a clear, unifying legal or factual thread linking all the claims, a class action cannot move forward.

In Betty Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., the United States Supreme Court delivered a 5-4 decision against the plaintiff class, with Justice Scalia writing the majority opinion. The Court rejected class certification based on plaintiffs failing to meet Rule 23(a)(2)’s commonality requirement. The majority significantly heightened the standard for commonality, ruling that a class must share not only common questions but also that their claims must depend on a common contention whose resolution would address all claims simultaneously. This effectively required the 1.5 million women plaintiffs to demonstrate not just a shared problem of discrimination but also a common pathway to resolving those problems—an extraordinarily high bar for large-scale employment discrimination cases. The decision featured a notable gender split, with all male justices (except Breyer) voting against certification and all female justices dissenting, highlighting differing perspectives on how employment discrimination manifests within large organizations.