Wal-Mart wants gender bias action rolled back

By Dolan Media Newswires
Posted: 5:44 pm Wed, September 1, 2010

(Dolan Media Newswires) — Retail giant Wal-Mart has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt what could be the mother of all employment gender bias class action lawsuits.

Yesterday the retailer petitioned the Court to reverse a Ninth Circuit ruling that would allow more than 1.5 million women employees to join a lawsuit alleging the company paid women less than men and passed women over for promotions, reports the Christian Science Monitor. The closely split, 6-5 ruling allows women who worked in any Wal-Mart store since 1998 to join the suit.

The dissenting judges in the case noted that the women may not share the same circumstances, and they may not have suffered a common injury. One dissenter, Judge Alex Kosinski, wrote: “They have little in common but their sex and this lawsuit.”

Wal-Mart claims that a class action so large would be almost impossible to defend.

“The class is larger than the active-duty personnel in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard combined – making it the largest employment class action in history by several orders of magnitude,” wrote Theodore Boutrous in the brief filed with the Supreme Court.