1. What did the Supreme Court decide in the Wal-Mart case? And more importantly, how did it justify its decision? According to the open lab lecture information in Wal-Mart stores inc Betty Dukes v 2011, the Supreme court made a decision that women can not move forward with their case of class action lawsuit, as they do not provide any “Commonality” which means they should have the same legal issues regarding to the class action lawsuit. Women said they were discriminated by company as they paid less on salary than men workers and promotion also was less. However Supreme Court decided it can not be the common reason or problem to the case, as they were paid by different managers in a different individual stores. By checking the policy of Wal-Mart company wide, the Supreme Court find out that there is no any policy that could discriminate the women. And after decision of Supreme Court, they said that women’s case can not be the class action of lawsuit.

In the Wal-Mart v. Dukes case, the Supreme Court shut down the big class-action lawsuit that over a million women tried to bring. The main issue was “commonality,” which basically means everyone in the lawsuit has to be tied together by the same policy or situation. The Court said that wasn’t the case here, since each store and manager had their own way of making pay and promotion decisions. In other words, there wasn’t one single company-wide rule of discrimination to point to, so the women’s claims didn’t have that “glue” to hold them all together as one class. That’s how the Court justified the decision that it wasn’t that discrimination never happened, but the experiences were too different to combine into one case.

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 Supreme Court decided the women couldn’t sue as one giant class action. They justified their decision based on the term commonality, which means everyone in a class action must share an important question that can be answered the same way for the whole group, and because the group suing Walmart was so large (potentially over 1.5 million women), they argued that women’s situations were too different because pay and promotion decisions were made by individual store managers and not by one company-wide policy, meaning there wasn’t one single policy affecting all women in the same way.

Additionally, the Court also ruled that the women had filed under the wrong type of class action by asking for both policy changes and money in the same claim, which the rules don’t allow. According to the Court, their final decision was based on the fact that the case was thrown out because the group wasn’t similar enough to qualify as a single class.

Commonality means a shared issue or interest. The supreme court decided that regardless of the evidence that was presented by Betty Dukes, her team and the 1.5 million women, they did not have enough commonality in the case. Therefore, they could not continue with the case, and were misclassified from women class statues. The Supreme Court took the decision, based on that not all of the women were not denied the same promotions ,or wages as their male counterpart. This argument was enough to deny the women’s claims. Regardless, this sparked multiple questions about Walmart policies, and the treatment for women in their facilities. Many different stories about male preference were raised. However, there was retaliation for a lot of women who worked at Walmart, with many being fired.

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 the Betty Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. case, the Court ruled that the class represented in Dukes failed to meet Rule 23’s commonality requirement, meaning that there be “questions of law or fact” common to the class. In a split 5-4 decision Antonin Scalia argued that, to establish commonality, a class must not only share a common problem but also a common solution that would equally compensate all members in a single stroke. He reasoned that because the 1.5 million female Wal-Mart employees were not all denied the same promotion, pay raise, or subjected to discrimination by the same manager, their cases could not be legitimately litigated all at once. He further stated that, “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.” 

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 term means, as it is key to the court’s decision).
Answer: As we can read from open lab lecture information Wal-Mart v. Betty Dukes Betty Dukes case, the Supreme Court decided that the group of women could not bring their case as a class action lawsuit. The women argued that Wal-Mart had discriminated against them by paying them less and giving them fewer promotions than men. But the Court said they did not show enough Commonality. From the open lab information, ‘Commonality’ is mean that people in a class action lawsuit must share the same basic legal issues. Then the Court thought the women’s cases were too different from each other because decisions about pay and promotions were made by many different managers in many stores. Since there was no single company-wide policy that clearly caused discrimination, the Court said the women did not have enough in common to be treated as one large group. After that the Supreme Court justified it’s decision by saying that without commonality, the women could not be a single class in a class action lawsuit.

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 (2011), the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the group of female employees could not move forward with their case as a single class-action lawsuit.

The decision focused on the legal requirement of commonality—which means that, for a class action to be allowed, all members of the group must share a common legal or factual issue that ties their claims together.

The women claimed that Wal-Mart had a companywide culture or policy that allowed gender discrimination in pay and promotions. However, the Court found they did not show enough evidence of a single, shared policy of discrimination affecting all female employees in the same way. Because decisions about pay and promotions were made by individual store managers, the Court said there wasn’t proof of a consistent, companywide pattern of bias.

Without a strong common question of law or fact linking all the women’s claims, the Court ruled the group was too large and too different to be treated as one class, and the lawsuit could not proceed in that form.

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).