WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court today handed a sweeping victory to Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest employer, in the company’s decadelong effort to thwart a discrimination class action filed on behalf of more than 1 million female current and former workers. The ruling is likely to hobble other large employment class actions as well.
Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for a 5-4 majority, said the plaintiffs failed to provide proof of a common companywide policy of discrimination, which he said is 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,” said Scalia in summarizing his ruling from the bench. He added that the plaintiffs’ evidence of commonality among the plaintiffs was “entirely absent” and “worlds away” from what is required under the court’s 1982 Falcon precedent.
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