Wal-Mart appeals class action certification to Supreme Court

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Wal-Mart appeals class action certification to Supreme Court

August 26, 2010 07:30:04 am

[JURIST] Wal-Mart [corporate website; JURIST news archive] petitioned [text, PDF] the US Supreme Court [official website] Wednesday to reconsider a decision by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit [official website] affirming class action certification [opinion, PDF; JURIST report] in a gender discrimination case. The company has asked the court to examine whether the appeals court’s April ruling was proper under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Due Process Clause, the Seventh Amendment and Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 (FRCP) [texts]. Wal-Mart’s position is that the class is overbroad and that the Ninth Circuit’s decision is inconsistent with certification standards in multiple circuits:

The district court certified a sprawling nationwide class consisting of all current and former female employees of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., estimated at the time to comprise at least 1.5 million women. The Ninth Circuit’s 6-5 en banc decision … adopts standards that violate the rights of both defendants and absent class members and contradicts decisions of this Court and other circuits The Ninth Circuit created an acknowledged three-way circuit split on the standard for determining when claims for monetary relief can be certified as a class action. … The majority expressly rejected both of the standards previously articulated in the circuits (one of which had been applied by the district court) and announced a new standard, thus exacerbating the long-standing conflict and confusion on this issue in the lower courts.

Wal-Mart also contends that claims for monetary relief cannot be certified under FRCP 23, which it says only applies to claims to injunctive relief.

The case was filed in 2001 by female Wal-Mart employees [class website] who contend that Wal-Mart’s nationwide policies result in lower pay for women than men in comparable positions and longer waits for management promotions than men. The Ninth Circuit granted an en banc rehearing [JURIST report] to Wal-Mart last year. According to the order, a majority of the Ninth Circuit judges, excluding the three judges who heard an earlier appeal [JURIST report] in which class certification was upheld, voted in favor of an en banc hearing. A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit originally ruled against Wal-Mart’s appeal of the class certification in February 2007, then issued a new opinion [text, PDF] in conjunction with its decision in December 2007. Wal-Mart appealed [JURIST report] to the Ninth Circuit in 2005, arguing that the six lead plaintiffs were not typical or common of the class. Wal-Mart also objected to the size of the class certified, which it said violates its due process rights. Wal-Mart argued that its stores operate independently and should be sued individually, while plaintiffs’ lawyers countered that individual lawsuits would be impractical. The district court also rejected Wal-Mart’s claim that the class size was “impractical on its face” and approved a statistical formula for paying damages if discrimination is proven.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.