1. The Supreme Court decided in the Betty Dukes V. Wal-Mart case to deny the back pay owed to the women. The reason why this was the case was because the suit failed to meet its requirement of Commonality.  This rule states all parties in the suit need to share a common problem so that they can give a common solution to all. They argued that because all the moment experienced their discrimination to varying degrees and by different managers and pay, they could not be brought together all at once. It made it difficult to determine exactly why in each case the women were treated differently, which then made it difficult to decide what compensation was appropriate for the women if they had different degrees of discrimination and thus was the main reason for dismissing the case. This case opened the question of how difficult it is to determine Discrimination in general and could be explained away easily.

1. What did the Supreme Court decide in the Wal-Mart case?

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously the women in the case Walmart v. Dukes, 2011, failing to meet the rule of 23 requirement of commonality for back pay. Miss classifying their class under the rule 23. The amount of back pay would have added up to millions even billions of dollars in withheld wages for women across the country, this was only possible by filing b(3) claim. As the women filed under the “b(2)” class this made the case go back to square one. When making commonality central to the women’s ruling a split decision of 5-4 the Dukes failed agin to meet the rule 23s (a)(2)commonality requirement. Question of fact or law, a class must share the same problem and common solutions to the problem and equally be compensated at once. 

The court viewed the women who worked in various stores, regions and with different manager. This lead them to believe that every women’s situation was different not similar. Under commonality there was no single common policy that affected every women in the same way. Even thought they argued isn’t being a women enough to be the glue to decide that these women were affected by being a certain sex. Statistically Women made less in all Wal-mart regions and and were under promoted, the court made a decision on these stats that proved all women did not suffer the same discrimination in the same way. A diverse group with no single common issue cannot be brought together legally. Their must be a central problem and solution. The disparities in pay or promotion do not show a uniform company discriminatory practice. As here omen we’re fighting culture of sexism the court rejected the ideas of discrimination. Making it harder for women to be recognized as a class that go through widespread pattern of discrimination and sexism. Like women being told to blow the cobwebs off their makeup and doll up. Expert testimony were rejected by the court because it did not tie to a specific discriminatory practice anywhere. 

1. In the Betty Dukes V. Walmart case, the Supreme Court denied the back pay for 1.5 million women who experienced gender discrimination while working for the corporation. The reason that it was denied was due to the misclassification of the class action relief filed by the plaintiffs in the case. Under rule 23 of the Civil Procedure, class action lawsuits and the form of relief the classes may receive are separated into two categories. The first class is b(2) and this is where a class is looking for declaratory or injunctive relief. The second class is b(3) and this is where a class is looking for monetary relief. In this case, Dukes filed as a b(2) class instead of b(3) and were denied back pay because they did not do a b(3) claim. Additionally, the Supreme Court did not believe Dukes met the commonality requirement amongst all plaintiffs. The plaintiffs may have shared a common issue (gender discrimination at the workplace) but did not share the same managers, or were insulted in the same way. Commonality requires a class to share the same problem and also have a common solution to the problem that can compensate all members of the class at once. Due to the multiple differences among the women within the class, their cases could not be settled all at once. In the end, the Supreme Court ruled the 1.5 million women did not meet the requirements of being a “class” and could not file a class action lawsuit.

In the Wal-Mart case, the Supreme Court looked at whether the store’s female employees could join together in a big lawsuit about pay and promotions.They decided that the women didn’t show enough common ground to be in one class-action lawsuit.Basically, they said that just being a woman at Wal-Mart wasn’t enough to connect their experiences.
This decision is important because it affects how class-action lawsuits can be formed. The Court made it clear that there needs to be more than just a shared gender or general situation; there needs to be real evidence of common claims that tie all the people together. This ruling makes it tougher for large groups to come together to fight for their rights, especially in cases involving things like discrimination. It’s a big deal in the legal world because it sets a standard for how similar cases might be handled in the future.

The supreme court concluded the women in the suing of Wal-Mart V. Dukes couldn’t proceed due to a commonality. The court stated for them to sue they needed to sue collectively as one big class, that all of them had to prove and have a relative issue, that issue being that they experienced the same discrimination coming from the company policy. The supreme court justified their decision as that Wal-Mart did not have a clear rule that was discriminatory, the higher ups such as managers from different stores made their decisions based on their individuality. The court concluded that the women who were suing didn’t have enough in common in their class action lawsuit against Wal-Mart, but according to the court it’s not a class action due for their reason to no commonality.

In the Wal-Mart v. Dukes case, the Supreme Court basically said the woman couldn’t move forward as a class-action group. The main reason was the idea of “commonality”. The court said that in order to sue as one big class, everyone has to show they experienced the same kind of discrimination coming from one main company policy. The court felt the women couldn’t prove that. Wal-Mart didn’t have one official rule that discriminated against women, the decisions were made by thousands of different managers in different stores. Because of that, the court said the women didn’t have enough in common to be considered one “class”. So the court justified the decision by saying they didn’t all share a single common issue that tied their experience together. Without that “commonality”, they said the class-action lawsuit couldn’t move forward.

In the Wal-Mart Vs. Dukes(2011) the Supreme court ruled that the case could not proceed as a class action lawsuit. The Supreme court argued that the case failed to meet the legal requirement of commonality. Which is that everyone in the class has to share one common issue that can be solved by the ruling. And the courts stated that since Wal-Mart didnt have one clear discriminatory rule, managers made their own choices about pay. And in result of this each situation could be different depending on the manager, and that the case was too spread out to be ruled as a class action lawsuit. Meaning that the women could not be seen as one group because of the lack of commonality. I argue that the Supreme court proved again that it is a court to justify the corruption of the elite. This ruling makes it easier for the wealthy to avoid accountability by decentralizing discrimination.

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).