Walmart Billion Dollar sex discrimination case goes before Supreme Court

From [HERE] A 60-year-old Walmart greeter will come up against the world's biggest retailer this week in another round of the largest sex discrimination case in history.

In a case legal experts say will redefine discrimination law in the US, the supreme court will on Tuesday begin hearing arguments why Betty Dukes and more than a million women who worked for Walmart between December 1998 and the present day should be able to sue the retailer in a class action.

Walmart is appealing against an earlier court's decisions to let the case proceed after a judge said Dukes' lawyers had presented "significant proof of a corporate policy of discrimination".

Walmart, which is America's largest private employer, says the case has spun out of control and threatens to cost the retailer billions of dollar if it is allowed to proceed. The firm denies wrongdoing and argues that the accusations are too numerous and too diverse to be tried en masse.

Corporate America is watching nervously from the sidelines. Some 20Twenty major firms including General Electric and Microsoft have filed papers with the court in support of Walmart.

The case began in 2000 when Dukes filed a sex discrimination suit claiming she had been denied the training she needed to receive promotion. The civil rights lawyer Brad Seligman, representing Dukes, claims Walmart systematically discriminated against female employees, who were underrepresented in management positions and were paid less than male colleagues.

Whatever the supreme court decides is likely to have a profound impact for other groups of women bringing sex discrimination suits against employers in the US, said Melissa Hart, director of the Byron R White Centre for the Study of American Constitutional Law at the University of Colorado School of Law. "It's been decades since we have had the courts examine a case as important as this."

Hart added that she expected a ruling by June and that a loss would "make it increasingly difficult for women to challenge discrimination in the work place."

Should the courts rule in Dukes' favour, lawyers expect a whole new set of discrimination class actions to be brought, not just on behalf of women, but also for minorities or persons with disabilities. A win for Walmart would be a major blow for nationwide job-bias suits, making it harder to argue that employees who work in different stores and hold different jobs have enough in common to be a class.

Dukes started working at the retailer's Pittsburg store in California in 1994 as a part-time cashier for $5 an hour. She was promoted to customer service manager but then says her path to further advancement was blocked. When she complained, arguments ensued and she was demoted. She still works for the company, earning just over $15 an hour.

The lawsuit claims that women account for only a third of what Walmart considers management. According to Seligman the representation of women in its workforce drops steadily the further up in the firm. In 2001 women outnumbered men by nearly 4-1 among hourly supervisors but comprised only 45.1% of the "support managers", the highest-level hourly supervisory position.

In salaried positions, Seligman argues, women comprised 37.6% of assistant managers, 21.9% of co-managers, and 15.5% of store managers. Figures from 2001 show that it took women an average 4.38 years from the date they were hired to be promoted to an assistant manager position compared with 2.86 years for men.

"Walmart is such a large employer but the standards are no different for a company that employs hundreds or one that employs millions," said Hart.