The U.S. Supreme Court handed a sweeping victory to Wal-Mart in June in the company’s decade-long effort to thwart a discrimination class action filed on behalf of more than 1 million current and former female employees. The ruling is likely to hobble other large employment class actions as well.
Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for a 5-to-4 majority, said the plaintiffs failed to provide proof of a common companywide policy of discrimination necessary to certify a class under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(a)(2). “To sue about literally millions of employment decisions at once, [plaintiffs] need some glue holding the alleged reasons for all those decisions together,” he said, summarizing his ruling from the bench. He added that the plaintiffs’ evidence of commonality was “entirely absent” and “worlds away” from what is required under the Court’s 1982 Falcon precedent.
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