Badin vs. Fredericktown
Miamisburg graduation 2012
Valley View vs. Greenville
Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2011 > June > 22
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Editorial: Wal-Mart won; women didn’t necessarily lose
Wal-Mart’s win at the U.S. Supreme Court this week was bigger than the loss handed to the women who were suing the company.
In a unanimous decision, the court said that lawyers didn’t have the goods to bring a class-action discrimination lawsuit on behalf of up to 1.5 million current and former female Wal-Mart employees.
The court didn’t decide if the women had been treated unfairly. Rather, the question was whether the company could be sued on behalf of virtually all women workers who would have been affected by practices some women said resulted in their being denied promotions and paid less.
The justices split 5-4 — with conservatives in the majority and liberals in the minority — on whether the women deserved the chance to make their case that they had been victimized under another part of the law.
A lawyer for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said, “This is, without a doubt, the most important class-action case in more than a decade.”
A women’s-rights group said that the decision was “devastating” and would undo “the rights of millions of women across the country to come together and hold their employers accountable for their discriminatory practices.”
The situation is more complicated than either analysis. The decision will, indeed, make it harder to file large class-action lawsuits. But if there’s a pattern of egregious behavior in a small company, or a division, or even one Wal-Mart store, suing on behalf of a group is still doable.
What the court balked at was the possibility that Wal-Mart could end up liable for $1 billion in damages even though literally tens of thousands of women’s particular situation or circumstances would never be looked at individually. This case was the largest employment discrimination lawsuit in the country ever.
By their very nature, class-action lawsuits don’t attempt to establish the precise facts about everyone who is impacted. But this case took that reality to a wholly different level. Notwithstanding disturbing anecdotes from women employees, the majority said the plaintiffs hadn’t shown any evidence that the world’s largest retailer had a nationwide policy — at its 3,400 stores — of mistreating women.
“In a company of Wal-Mart’s size and geographical scope, it is quite unbelievable that all managers would exercise their discretion in a common way without some common direction,” wrote Justice Antonin Scalia.
Critics of class-action lawsuits generally have a point when they complain that lawyers for victims can often make out better than those who actually were cheated in some way. The estimate for the average wage gap each year for each affected Wal-Mart worker was around $1,100. In the event of a victory, that number would have paled in comparison to the amounts the lawyers would have been due.
That reality rubs a lot of people wrong. Yes, lawyers should have an incentive to take cases where the damage may be small to single individuals, but still affect a lot of people. But clearly there are cases of windfalls that are out of proportion to the work that goes into a particular lawsuit and even to the loss.
Class-action lawsuits aren’t the problem. But the rules around them have to be fair, and those who are being sued have to have a reasonable chance of defending themselves. The Wal-Mart case was overreaching.
TweetGo to our facebook page and Like us to comment.
