The Supreme Court unanimously ruled Monday that the largest class-action suit in American judicial history failed because of a procedural misstep on the part of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, according to the New York Times. But on a broader level, the Court split 5-4 on ideological grounds as to the question of whether the plaintiffs had satisfied the substantive requirement that their claims be grounded in common questions of law or fact.
The suit involved as many as 1.5 million women alleging gender discrimination resulting in potentially billions of dollars worth of damages. The women basically sought to prove that Wal-Mart corporate policy allows widespread discrimination against women in terms of promotion and wage increases. The Court dismissed this argument. Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said the plaintiffs would be unable to uncover “a common answer to the crucial question why I was disfavored.” He then noted that Wal-Mart operates almost 3500 locations, expressly prohibits discrimination, and gives its regional and store managers broad discretion to hire and fire as they will. This, Scalia says, is the opposite of a uniform policy allowing gender discrimination in personnel decisions.
But to say that managers can do what they will without worrying about corporate oversight is to abandon any pretense of a uniform "anti-discrimination policy." Without enforcement, there might as well be no rule. And if a corporation is not responsible for the actions of its managers just because of its size and hands-off approach to delegating, individual employees will have limited options for pursuing discrimination claims going forward. A lone plaintiff faces an uphill battle already in asserting a claim against a Wal-Mart, Target or McDonald's. Restricting access to class-actions makes that challenges no easier. It remains to be seen what consequences the decision will have going forward, but Justice Ginsberg's four-Justice dissent highlights the potential problems:
“The practice of delegating to supervisors large discretion to make personnel decisions, uncontrolled by formal standards, has long been known to have the potential to produce disparate effects,” she wrote. “Managers, like all humankind, may be prey to biases of which they are unaware.”
