Editorial
A Million Women vs. Wal-Mart
Published: August 30, 2010
For nine years, Wal-Mart has fought to stave off a class-action lawsuit alleging that the company has long discriminated against its female workers in pay and promotions. So far it has avoided a trial on the merits of the issue. The battleground instead is whether the million or so women who have worked for Wal-Mart since 2001 really constitute a class, which the company vigorously disputes. In 2004, a federal district court judge said they did, and in April the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, ruling the case could proceed.
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Times Topic: Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
Now Wal-Mart has taken the class issue to the Supreme Court. It is probably a smart legal move, given the court’s clear tendency to rule in favor of corporations, particularly when big classes or discrimination claims are involved. We hope the court resists the temptation to toss out the case, which would force women to file lawsuits one by one. Wal-Mart’s employment practices deserve a full hearing.
The case originally began with seven female employees of Wal-Mart who realized that men were being paid more than women for comparable jobs and were getting promoted more often. As District Judge Martin J. Jenkins wrote in 2004, the statistics showed that women working in Wal-Mart stores were paid less than men in every region and in most job categories. The salary gap widened over time even for men and women hired into the same jobs at the same time, he wrote, and women took longer to enter into management positions.
Just because statistics showed a general salary gap, and more than 100 women presented evidence of second-class status, does that mean that each of the more than one million women who have worked at Wal-Mart in the last decade were victims of discrimination?
The company said that was an outlandish claim, and argued that there was no pattern or intent of discrimination. Judge Jenkins found that the potential discrimination was big enough to affect women as a class. The Ninth Circuit agreed and said it was better to deal with the matter in one lawsuit than with thousands clogging up the court system.
If this goes forward it would be the largest employment discrimination lawsuit in American history. Wal-Mart could face more than $1 billion in damages if the case proceeds and the company loses. Wal-Mart is the world’s largest private employer, and as the Ninth Circuit wrote, “mere size does not render a case unmanageable.” The Supreme Court should give the women of Wal-Mart a chance to make their case together.
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