Retail giant Wal-Mart is being sued by a group of female employees claiming discrimination. They are accusing Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club of paying women “less than men in comparable positions, despite having higher performance ratings and greater seniority.” According to Time.com, the suit also claims use of sexist language used by executives. Only six women originally filed this suit in 2001, but as of December 2010, between 500,000 and 1.5 million women are involved in the “largest workplace-bias lawsuit in US history.”
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal and to decide if the case can advance as a class action lawsuit. The appeal is not to decide if there was in fact discrimination, but whether individual claims may be combined as a class action suit. This decision by the Supreme Court is sure to impact a large number of class action suits as well as womens rights. Wal-Mart is trying to stop the suit because they say “allowing the large number of claims to go forward would set off an avalanche of similar class action lawsuits.”
The petition Wal-Mart submitted to the court says that “the complaint seeks conjunctive relief, back pay, and punitive damages; it does not seek compensatory damages or retroactive promotions.”
