In a long awaited decision, the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of Wal-Mart Corporation and reversed two lower court rulings that had approved approximately 1.5 million female employees suing the company for sexual discrimination in pay and benefits.  The practical effect of the ruling is that a current or former female employee must personally sue Wal-Mart for alleged sexual discrimination in pay and benefits on her own, an unlikely scenario.

The lower courts had ruled the plaintiffs, current and former female Wal-Mart employees, could litigate the case in a class proceeding in which the potential discrimination claims of all female employees of the company could be addressed.  The only unanimous portion of the decision in Wal-Mart v. Dukes, et al, Docket No. 10-277, issued June 20, 2011, was that the plaintiffs could not proceed under a narrow portion of the Class Action Rules that applied predominantly where the relief sought was an injunction.  Since the Wal-Mart case focused predominantly on damage claims for all past and present female employees, the case could not proceed under the Section of the Rule plaintiffs sought to invoke.

The majority of the Court went further and indicated that even had the case been brought under the other section of the Class Action Rules designed to address multiple damage claims, it still could not proceed because there was no proof Wal-Mart actually discriminated against women in terms of pay and benefits and because the damage claims of each potential class member was arguable different from the other class members, such that class adjudication was inappropriate and would deny Wal-Mart its right to defend each claim.  The dissenting Justices would have let the plaintiffs proceed under the second section of the Rules and would have permitted the class action to continue.

© 2011 Abbott Nicholson, P.C.