Court Systems and JurisdictionSupreme Court

Sides With Walmart

Date of Submission: 05/08/2016
Terminal Course Objective: A
Week 1: Assignment

Ishita Sinha
Student ID: D40561111
MGMT520 Legal Political and Ethical Dimensions of Business
Professor Dayle Deardurf

Brief Description
In todays world, discrimination is one of the biggest problems people face in the
workplace. Workplace discrimination can take many forms. It can be due to difference
in salaries between genders, hiring of individuals on discriminatory preferences, sexual
harassment, inhospitable work environments or racist comments passed. In 2011, a
shocking sex discrimination lawsuit was brought against Walmart on behalf of around
1.5 million female employees. The agenda of this assignment is to discuss the case and
connections between business, law, politics, and ethics with respect to the case study
provided.

Facts
Plaintiff Betty Dukes, at a Pittsburgh, California store was a low-level Walmart
employee. With five other women she stood up and filed a CLASS-ACTION lawsuit
against Walmart to fight against the basic civil rights breach by the organization. The
allegation was that certain company policies resulted in widespread discrimination
against females of the company as they have been denied equal pay and promotions
because of their gender. There were more than 1.5 million women who stood up for this
and they were those who were employed by Walmart, Walmart being the defendant
argued with the court that there should not be a class action lawsuit filing , instead
individuals should file lawsuits separately because they dont have a common ground
to come together as a class action. Walmart did that as they knew that because of the
enormous size of the class, it will make them impossible to manage and will increase
their costs heavily.
Issue
There were 2 basic issues addressed:
The most basic concern before Supreme Court was that whether all female
employees at Walmart as a group can be certified as a single class or not? And if the
class is having more than one million people under a single employer all over the
country, are they able to prove the uniformity and commonness of the
discrimination under the employment policy?
Is there any claim for monetary relief permitted under this case?
Reasons and Conclusion
Joseph Seller, lawyer who was appointed to represent the class of females tried to
prove their point by providing evidence to the court that if the overall hiring and the
organization of the company is analyzed, female employees occupied two-thirds (or
approximately 70%) of the most lowest paid hourly jobs and only one-third (or
approximately 30% ) of the management jobs. And also that on an average females of
the organization were paid $1.16 per hour less than the men in the same job profile
without any reason for the same mentioned in the policy, even if the women had more
experience and higher performance rating.
Conclusion: The decision was in favor of Walmart. Court decided that this battle needs
to be proceeded as one women/or one individual at a time. Associate justice of
Supreme court Antonin Scalia said To sue about literally millions of employment
decisions at once, plaintiffs need some glue holding the alleged reasons for all those
decisions together As there were no specific emails and specific corporate policies
which showed the discrimination against women and the plaintiffs were just trying to
show a general statistical disparity, the case ended in Walmarts favor.
Rules of Law

 According to the Federal Rules 23(a)(2) which was laid down, it was highly
mandatory that when a class action lawsuit is filed which has more than one million
people filing against an organization, a distinct commonality criterion must be there
so that all the individuals under the class certification can prove that they were all
subject to the same discriminatory employment policy.
According to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 23 (b) (2), unless and until it is
incidental to the declaratory or injunctive relief, no monetary relief can be certified.

Questions to be discussed:
A. This story is about the Supreme Courts decision. What process did this
case have to go through to get to the Supreme Court?
As the plaintiff was working at a store in California, who sought to represent 1.5 million
women, filed a CLASS-ACTION lawsuit at the district court in San Francisco. After 3
years, when the judge ruled in favor of class certification, which made Walmart appeal
the decision to the court again, hence the case went to the Court of appeals (or under
appellate jurisdiction). Post which, the appellate court criticized the view of the class
classification which resulted in Walmart promptly filing for a rehearing saying that the
women class have made a legal mistake in the process. But it didnt turn out the way
Walmart expected it to be. Now, the panel withdrew its earlier stating and issued an
opinion on top of it which will still permit the class certification. The company again
filed for a rehearing. In 2009, Ninth Circuit granted Wal-Mart's petition which made all
the previous hearings no longer effective. And finally in April 2010, the decision made
by the judges contradicted many precedent decisions of federal appellate court and
was indicated that Walmart should appeal to the U.S Supreme court. On 6th Dec 2009,
court agreed to hear Walmart's appeal.
B. In the story, two justices wrote difering opinions about the issue. Discuss
the diferences between a majority opinion, a concurring opinion, and a
dissenting opinion. What efect does each type of opinion have on the state
of the law in America?
A dissenting opinion is an opinion written by one or more judges expressing
disagreement with the majority opinion of the court. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, with
the three other dissenting justices pointed to previous Supreme Court decisions holding
that a policy which was a common factor of discrimination can be very subtle. And
there are so many biases at workplace which are even unrecognized by the supervisors
themselves.
But a majority opinion is the judicial opinion which is agreed to by more than half of the
members of the court. In this case the majority opinion, was the opinion given by
Justice Antonin Scalia. According to court's majority they saw the picture different from
the dissenting judges. For suing as a class, all the women in the class should point to a
single discriminatory policy that affected all of the 1.5 million women. His words were
"A wish to sue about literally millions of employment decisions at once. Without some
glue holding the alleged reasons for all those decisions together, it will be impossible to
say that examination of all the class members claim for relief will produce a common
answer to the crucial question 'why was I disfavored.'"
And so a concurring opinion is a written opinion by one or more judges of a court which
agrees with the decision made by the majority of the court, but states different (or
additional) reasons as the basis for his or her decision. All of the republican appointees
joined Scalia in his majority decision.
A majority decision's effect on the state is that it becomes a law and creates a
precedent. A concurring opinion supports the majoritys decision. Whereas a dissenting
opinion does not create binding precedent nor does it become a part of case law.
3. What type of jurisdiction did the federal courts have in this case? Was it a
federal question case or a diversity of citizenship case? Why?

The jurisdiction in this case is the Subject Matter Jurisdiction. Subject-matter

jurisdiction is actually the authority of a court to hear cases of a particular type or cases
relating to a specific subject matter.
In this case, it was against employment discrimination. I believe it was a case of federal
question which is a subject matter jurisdiction and states that federal courts can hear
a civil case as plaintiff has alleged and filed a violation against United States
Constitution. As it is given that this particular case addresses the federal rules
regarding class classification, it can be heard by the Supreme Court.
Diversity of citizenship, on the other hand; is addressed by two citizens from two
different state authorities who have a disagreement of law and hence request federal
ruling.