For several months, we have monitored the historic gender discrimination case filed against retail giant Wal-Mart by a class of 1.5 million female employees, current and former. Today, the United States Supreme Court rejected the plaintiffs' application for class action status, effectively dismissing the lawsuit, finding that the massive class of plaintiffs was unable to present a single uniform example of a gender discrimination policy that was followed by the retailer and its employees.

The lawsuit was filed over a decade ago by eight women on behalf of a class of 500,000 to 1.5 million current and former female Wal-Mart employees. The suit alleged that women at Wal-Mart were systematically paid less than male counterparts and continually passed over for deserved promotions.

Wal-Mart repeatedly challenged the employment lawsuit based on the size of the class, which is the largest in U.S. history. The plaintiffs had previously won two narrow victories in the Ninth Circuit Court in San Francisco, who twice granted the plaintiffs the class action status they needed to proceed.

But the plaintiffs were not so fortunate in front of the Supreme Court. In a 5-4 vote, the court ruled that there were no unifying grounds for the class action lawsuit because each plaintiff's experience would, presumably, be different. In writing for the majority, Justice Scalia wrote that the plaintiffs' could not point to a uniform employment practice that had threaded each of the 1.5 million employees' cases together, and that the claim that Wal-Mart's "corporate culture" of discrimination was not sufficient to allow the class to proceed.

Specifically, the majority did not agree with the plaintiffs' claim that Wal-Mart's policy to allow local supervisors discretion over employment matters. "On its face...that is just the opposite of a uniform employment practice that would provide the commonality needed for a class action," Scalia wrote. "It is a policy against having uniform employment practices."

Source: Associated Press, "Supreme Court rejects Wal-Mart sexual bias suit," Lucile Malandain, 20 June 2011