(Courtesy photo)

The ghost of Betty Dukes still haunts the aisles of Walmart Inc.—and the halls of Walmart's legal department, which is having to deal with the latest round of gender discrimination lawsuits.

Dukes, the former Walmart worker who died last July, led 1.5 million women into a class action lawsuit on gender discrimination in 2001, only to see the U.S. Supreme Court toss it on a technical ruling over procedure, not on the merits, in 2011.

Now in the footsteps of Dukes several hundred women across a dozen states or more are filing individual discrimination suits against Walmart, according to Christine Webber, a civil rights lawyer and partner with Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll in Washington, D.C.

The law firm was co-lead counsel on the Dukes class action and is now helping to coordinate the state suits with local law firms.

Webber, who worked nine years on the Dukes case, told Corporate Counsel on Tuesday the new suits represent the first of 1,800 women, most of whom were part of the original Dukes action. They are claiming discrimination in pay and promotions at the world's largest retailer.

“We have unfinished business that we are determined to see through to the end,” she said. “We have really tremendous clients who have been sticking with their claims for many years.”

Randy Hargrove, Walmart's senior director of national media relations, said the company plans to defend against the gender bias claims.

“Walmart has had a strong policy against discrimination in place for many years and we continue to be a great place for women to work and advance,” Hargrove said. “In fact last year, 57 percent of our U.S. hourly promotions were women as were 43 percent of U.S. management promotions.”

Walmart has enacted a model diversity program that especially impacted its in-house legal department, which grew from a handful of women lawyers in 1998 to 42% in 2005 and 46% a year ago.

In addition, its chief legal officer and group general counsel are female, as are 6 of 14 division general counsel. That includes this month's appointment of Jeanine Jiganti to the new position of general counsel for health and wellness.

The changes have not stopped the plaintiffs. Webber said complaints alleging gender discrimination already have been filed through local law firms in six states: Florida, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia, with more expected this week in Ohio and California. They total 19 cases involving 150 female plaintiffs so far.

Some are suing alone, she said, while others are in small groups who shared work situations, such as the same regions or managers. “The jury will still be asked about each individual and not the group,” Webber explained.

Preparations are underway for suits in five more states: Alabama, Iowa, Illinois, Mississippi and Texas in the coming months, she added. There will probably be more beyond that, she said.

Webber has worked at Cohen Milstein for 21 years. In the Dukes case, she said she was heavily involved in taking depositions and coordinating discovery. Later she said she was one of a four-person team that drafted the Dukes class certification brief.

Reversing a lower court, the Supreme Court ruled the group was too expansive and there were too many differences among members to be certified as a class.

Before Cohen Milstein, Webber worked as an in-house counsel for four years at the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights & Urban Affairs from 1993 to 1997.

After Dukes, she helped bring regional class action suits against Walmart on behalf of smaller groups of women. As they neared oral arguments, the Supreme Court ruled in an unrelated case that the statute of limitations could bar these class actions, though not individual suits.

“Procedural hurdles continued to be put before our clients,” Webber said, but the 1,800 women and their lawyers regrouped again. They won their right to sue letters from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and began bringing actions one by one.

Hargrove said the plaintiffs' allegations are more than 15 years old “and are not representative of the positive experiences millions of women have had working at Walmart.”

He said Walmart outpaces the current S&P 500 female representation at the corporate officer level. Women represent 32% of corporate officers at Walmart while the S&P 500 average is 27%, he said.

Hargrove also said women represent 25% of the Walmart board, outpacing the S&P 500 average of 21%.

He added since 2016 more than 800,000 Walmart associates have gone through a special training academy, with 60% of them being women. “We are committed to creating a performance culture where associates are rewarded based on meaningful factors such as qualifications, experience [and] performance,” he said.

Webber conceded that most of the claims are based on pre-2010 Walmart behavior.

“I'm certainly not suggesting that there has been no change,” she said. “Walmart has made changes in practices and increased the number of women in management. But it's still not where we would expect it to be.”

Walmart's legal team is apparently being led by Littler Mendelson, according to Webber, who said she saw that law firm defending Walmart in the regional suits and continues to see it in the state actions.

Hargrove said Walmart generally does not discuss its outside counsel, and Littler managing director Thomas Bender wouldn't comment. He directed calls to Jennifer Klein, director of public relations, who did not return the message.