The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
[Supreme Court] Wal-Mart v. Dukes discussion
a5ehren
AtlantaRegistered User regular
AtlantaRegistered User regular
Here, let me help you out.
Copy and paste this into your OP if you want. It's an interesting enough topic.
Slate article explaining the decision: http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2011/06/20/wal_mart_sex_discrimination_supreme_court_rules_class_action_can.html
In short, here's what happened.
The plaintiffs represent a group of women who claim that they were discriminated against by Wal-Mart. The substance of their claim is that Wal-Mart's corporate culture encourages sexism; furthermore allowing district managers to make hiring decisions allows that sexist culture to manifest locally without it being directly caused by discrimination on a high national level. They seeked to submit a class-action lawsuit on behalf of all women who worked for Wal-Mart.
SCOTUS told the plaintiffs that they could not proceed with a class-action lawsuit, because they could not show that there was a single common illegal practice that united them as a class. In other words, if one woman had suffered sexual harassment in one state, while another woman had suffered reduced pay due to sexist discrimination in another, then while they were both hurt by sexism, the "glue" that united them as a class was not common enough.
I'm not sure how I feel about this. I am highly sympathetic to the plaintiffs, however, I am also sympathetic to the notion that to proceed as a class demands that the plaintiffs show a substantive common thread - not merely that they were harmed in a vaguely similar manner by a toxic corporate culture.
Here's the actual SCOTUS opinion document. IANAL, so I don't really know what this all means, but it sounds bad.
a5ehren on
0
Posts
Yeah I'm working on it.
This might help? Sounds like:
a) Scalia's a tool
b) If you have a policy that says "don't discriminate" then you obviously won't
c) There is a valid point that you need to show harm in order to be part of a class, and I'm not sure how you can manage that in this case (from either side)
d) This doesn't have anything to do with binding arbitration, which isn't what I expected when I clicked the link.
Copy and paste this into your OP if you want. It's an interesting enough topic.
Slate article explaining the decision: http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2011/06/20/wal_mart_sex_discrimination_supreme_court_rules_class_action_can.html
In short, here's what happened.
The plaintiffs represent a group of women who claim that they were discriminated against by Wal-Mart. The substance of their claim is that Wal-Mart's corporate culture encourages sexism; furthermore allowing district managers to make hiring decisions allows that sexist culture to manifest locally without it being directly caused by discrimination on a high national level. They seeked to submit a class-action lawsuit on behalf of all women who worked for Wal-Mart.
SCOTUS told the plaintiffs that they could not proceed with a class-action lawsuit, because they could not show that there was a single common illegal practice that united them as a class. In other words, if one woman had suffered sexual harassment in one state, while another woman had suffered reduced pay due to sexist discrimination in another, then while they were both hurt by sexism, the "glue" that united them as a class was not common enough.
I'm not sure how I feel about this. I am highly sympathetic to the plaintiffs, however, I am also sympathetic to the notion that to proceed as a class demands that the plaintiffs show a substantive common thread - not merely that they were harmed in a vaguely similar manner by a toxic corporate culture.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Title VII was directly addressed by the SCOTUS majority opinion.
They said that it's not enough to show that the entire class was harmed by aggregate violations of a given law, you have to show that the law was violated in the same way for all members of that class.
That seems... weird.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I wonder how localized this treatment of the women was though. In my time at Wal-Mart, there was never any lesser treatment of women. In fact, most of the people in the store were women, and the bulk of mid-management was women as well.
However, the underlying argument is fairly logical - that even if midlevel people were discriminating that there was no overarching systemic link on a corporate level, and that the discriminated could sue individually. Which sounds good on paper, but is one of those things that gets you with fridge logic when you think about it for a while.
As in "Well, while individual managers allowed toys with lead paint to be produced, there's no overarching corporate policy at mattel to use lead paints, so therefore the company can't be sued in a class action. Sorry guys." I feel like it's not enough to hold these companies to a standard of mere neglect on issues like this, these managers were working for Wal-Mart, and if there was an issue that was occuring there should have been active measures in place to prevent it.
There's a majority and dissent trying to figure out how restrictive the commonality requirement is, but the women lost here, period.
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
That's not what this case means. The class action in your example is unaffected by this and would be perfectly valid.
And before anyone misunderstands what lost means: they have not lost their discrimination case. That hasn't even gone to trial yet. They have lost in the sense that they didn't get certified to represent all 1.5 million female Wal-Mart employees as one discrimination claim class.
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
WTF? NYT is reporting it as a 5-4 split...
:rotate:
The 4 thought that the case didn't have to be dismissed, but it could not go forward using the legal theories they were using.
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/10-277.pdf
is the case. PARTS 1 and 3 are 9-0.
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
Technically, no. In actuality, yes, they have lost.
I wonder if smaller groups would be able to file class actions regionally.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Eh, the point of these cases isn't merely to provide restitution to the injured, it is also to punish the company and deter future shenanigans.
I don't think it's beyond the pale to say that it's not enough for a company the size of Wal-Mart to have a lack of overt discrimination; they must actively fight discrimination within their own corporate structure if they want to avoid litigation.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
No, none of them would have received shitload of money from the thing, but most of the would probably have liked seeing Walmart hit for a few billion dollars, before punitive damages were awarded. That's the sort of money that can motivate a company to make actual changes.
Why not just have "Every Minority in Chicago vs the CPD" as a case too? That's actually more narrow than this.
A really big part of me wants to say "fine, let's blow those doors open. Make people in power take responsibility for the toxic institutional cultures of the organizations they run."
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Me too, but I bet what's keeping both of us from saying so is the knowledge that it would result in a legal clusterfuck of epic proportions.
Yep.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Pretty much agree with this. If there's thousands of different cases without a single cause then you can't have a single lawsuit. They'll all have different evidence, and some may be guilty and some may be innocent.