Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Female Wal-Mart Employees Again Fail to Sustain Class Action

Undeterred by the 2011 ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court in Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, another group of that same company’s employees tried bringing a similar class-action lawsuit, this time on behalf of a slightly narrower scope.  In Dukes the plaintiffs’ class-action lawsuit alleged company-wide sex discrimination on behalf of all female employees and former employees, nation-wide.  The Supreme Court in that case dismissed the class action on the grounds that the plaintiffs could not show sufficient “commonality” among such a diverse group of putative plaintiffs, especially where the challenged decisions involved distinct stores and managers.  The plaintiffs in Ladik v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., apparently tried to get around the problems encountered by the plaintiffs in Dukes by limiting the scope of their complaint to “Region 14,” which included all female Wal-Mart employees in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan. Unfortunately for the plaintiffs and their counsel the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals nixed their class action claims for the same reasons relied on in Dukes.  Although the plaintiffs in this case limited their geographic scope, the court held that they did not overcome any of the obstacles that prevented the plaintiffs in Dukes from proceeding as a class; they did not show that all of the proposed class members shared any common questions of law or fact.

As in Dukes, the plaintiffs in this case complained of a number of practices they claim resulted in lower rates of pay and promotion for female employees than for their male counterparts.  However, disparate results do not necessarily mean that there is a specific discriminatory policy that has negatively affected all of the potential class members.  Even if these women were all discriminated against because of their sex, the court determined that a class-action lawsuit was not the appropriate avenue for them to pursue their claims. 


Read about the landmark Dukes case here.

By: James B. Sherman, Esq.