The United States Supreme Court will look today into the Wal-mart v. Dukes case, which will determine if 1.6 million women can sue the retail giant as part of a single class action lawsuit. The female workers are trying to sue Wal-mart for gender-based discrimination. Wal-mart is fighting The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals three times ruling in favor of the workers, which granted them the right to sue collectively. Wal-mart claims that the female employees should not be considered for a class action lawsuit because the company “does not have a company-wide discrimination policy” and that each Wal-mart store functions as an independent business unit. If today's decision allows the women to sue, over 1.6 million current and former female employees of Wal-mart, could be included in the case, making it the largest employment class-action lawsuit in US history. If the female workers win, Wal-mart will be forced to pay billions of dollars in compensation. Betty Dukes and six other plaintiffs who worked in 13 outlet stores were the first to file the lawsuit in 2001. Dukes was hired as a cashier at a Wal-mart in California in 1994. Wal-mart is the number one employer with over 3,400 in the US alone. “Just one woman suing Wal-mart cannot possibly have the resources and make the difference that having women stand together can. When the women stand together, you can see the patterns of discrimination that are holding so many of them back,” said Jocelyn Larkin, one of the workers' defense team in a interview on the Today Show. Wal-mart says it doesn't discriminate against women. “Wal-mart is an excellent place for women to work and has been recognized as a leader in fostering the advancement and success of women in the workplace,” said the company in a statement in August 2010. Dukes,in describing her situation then, that “it was very disheartening to know that you could barely put food on your table. You know there is no position there's no opportunities for you to move ahead.” “Wal-Mart would like to fight these lawsuits one by one. But Wal-Mart with their $450 billion of revenue, you know, challenging an $8 an hour sales worker, that's why we need a class-action case, and you need a class-action case because that's how you get the evidence,” Seligman said on the Today Show. In early March, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the National Women's Law Center (NWLC), as well as 32 other organizations including the Feminist Majority Foundation, filed an amicus brief in the US Supreme Court in support of a class action suit against Wal-Mart for discriminating against its women employees in stores nationwide. The women are seeking what could be billions of dollars in punitive damages and back pay for gendered wage discrepancies for all female employees of Wal-Mart since 1998. BM
