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Dayton Business Journal...
Wal-Mart sex-bias
lawsuit lands at Supreme Court
Staff Report
Monday, March 28, 2011
The U.S. Supreme Court to hear arguments in a sex-bias lawsuit against
Wal-Mart.
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on Tuesday in a massive
sex-discrimination class-action lawsuit against Wal-Mart Stores Inc.,
the nation’s biggest retailer.
The court will consider whether to allow the suit to move forward as
the largest employment class action in U.S. history, involving as many
as 1.5 million current and former female workers at the company, which
operates Walmart and Sam’s Club stores.
Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) operates 15 Dayton-area locations.
The suit, a piece of which dates back 10 years, alleges that Wal-Mart
discriminated against the women on pay and advancement. It could
involve billions of dollars in back pay and potential damages.
The Supreme Court agreed to review the case in December after the
federal 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled 6-5 in
April that it could advance as a class action.
The high court’s review Tuesday will focus on issues involved in
allowing the class action to advance, not the suit’s core allegations
of discrimination.
Wal-Mart objects to the case being allowed as a class action because of
its immense size, and because the women in question worked at thousands
of different stores and different issues are involved.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce filed a brief siding with Wal-Mart, saying
that allowing the class-action suit to go forward “would bury American
businesses in abusive class-action lawsuits to the detriment of
consumers, the U.S. economy and the judicial system itself.”
Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart competes against grocery and
department stores chains including Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT), The Kroger
Co. (NYSE: KR), Costco Wholesale Corp. (Nasdaq: COST), Macy’s Inc.
(NYSE: M), J.C. Penney Company Inc. (NYSE: JCP) and Sears (NASDAQ:
SHLD).
Read it with links at the Dayton Business Journal
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