The lawsuit, citing what are now dated figures from 2001, argued that women are grossly underrepresented among managers, holding just 14 percent of store manager positions compared with more than 80 percent of lower-ranking supervisory jobs that are paid by the hour. Wal-Mart responded that women in its retail stores made up two-thirds of all employees and two-thirds of all managers in 2001.
By a 5-4 vote, the Court said the entire suit must be ended because the plaintiffs could not show that Wal-Mart had a common policy of discriminating against women. Instead, the company allowed individual store managers to decide on pay levels and promotions, the Justices found.
The majority agreed with Wal-Mart's argument that being forced to defend the treatment of female employees regardless of the jobs they hold or where they work is unfair. Scalia said there needed to be common elements tying together "literally millions of employment decisions at once." He said that in the lawsuit against the nation's largest private employer, "That is entirely absent here." Scalia's opinion strongly suggested that such claims cannot proceed as a single class-action suit unless the plaintiffs can point to a company policy of discriminating against certain classifications of employees.
In a statement, Wal-Mart said, "The court today unanimously rejected class certification and, as the majority made clear, the plaintiffs' claims were worlds away from showing a companywide discriminatory pay and promotion policy."
The decision will also most likely affect pending class-action claims against Costco and other large businesses. Corporations and companies as varied as the too-big-to-fail Wall Street firm Goldman-Sachs & Co., electronics giant Toshiba America Inc., and Cigna Healthcare Inc. also face class-action claims from women they employ. Had civil rights lawyers succeeded in the case, they had hoped to bring other suits against large employers who they claim relegate women or minorities to lower-paying jobs. This decision is as important to class action suits as the AT&T case decided earlier this month by the Supreme Court.
"This is an extremely important victory not just for Wal-Mart, but for all companies that do business in the
United States," a lawyer for the defendant said. The assessment was similar on the other side of the issue. Marcia D. Greenberger, co-president of the National Women's Law Center, said, "The court has told employers that they can rest easy, knowing that the bigger and more powerful they are, the less likely their employees will be able to join together to secure their rights." Wal-Mart potentially faced billions of dollars in damages if it had had to answer claims by the huge group of employees.
The employees who brought the case are left to pursue their claims on their own, with much less money at stake and less pressure on Wal-Mart to settle. Two of the named plaintiffs, Christine Kwapnoski and Betty Dukes, vowed to continue their fight, even as they expressed disappointment about the ruling.
"We still are determined to go forward to present our case in court. We believe we will prevail there," said Dukes, a greeter at a Wal-Mart in California. "All I have to say is when I go back to work tomorrow, I'm going to let them know we are still fighting," said Kwapnoski, an assistant manager at a Sam's Club in California. Their fight is all the more difficult under this ruling because they do not have the power of numbers on their side.
The women's lawyers said they were considering filing thousands of discrimination claims against Wal-Mart, but they acknowledged the court had dealt a fatal blow to their initial plan.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the court's four liberal justices, said there was more than enough to unite the claims. "Wal-Mart's delegation of discretion over pay and promotions is a policy uniform throughout all stores," Ginsburg said. Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Stephen Breyer joined her opinion. Greenberger went on to opine, "The women of Wal-Mart, together with women everywhere, will now face a far steeper road to challenge and correct pay and other forms of discrimination in the workplace."
Big Business, including nearly two dozen large companies, lined up with Wal-Mart, while civil rights, women's and consumer groups sided with the women plaintiffs. Both sides accurately painted the case as extremely consequential. The business community said that a ruling for the women would lead to a flood of class-action lawsuits based on vague evidence. Supporters of the women suggested a decision in favor of Wal-Mart could remove a valuable weapon for fighting all variations of discrimination.
