Timeline: Chronology of Wal-Mart discrimination case
WASHINGTON |
Here is a chronology of key events in the case:
June 19, 2001: Betty Dukes, a Wal-Mart greeter at a store in Pittsburg, California, and five current or former female employees filed a lawsuit in federal court in San Francisco, accusing the retailer of discriminating against its female employees by paying them less than men and giving them fewer promotions.
April 28, 2003: Attorneys for the women filed a motion for class certification and asked the judge to rule the case can go to trial on behalf of all women who worked for Wal-Mart in the United States at any time since December 26, 1998, a group believed to exceed 1.5 million current and former female employees.
June 21, 2004: U.S. District Judge Martin Jenkins ruled the lawsuit can proceed as a nationwide class covering the women who worked at 3,400 stores, but did not decide the merits of the lawsuit.
He proposed a two-stage trial. First, the court would decide if Wal-Mart was liable for intentional sex discrimination. Depending on the verdict, the second stage would decide remedies, such as back pay, punitive damages and injunctive relief requiring pay and promotion changes.
April 26, 2010: A U.S. appeals court based in San Francisco, by a 6-5 vote, upheld the judge's conclusion that it would be better to handle the case as a single group rather than requiring individual lawsuits to be litigated.
August 25, 2010: Wal-Mart appealed to the Supreme Court. It argued claims involving current and former workers, hourly employees and salaried managers and stores across the country were too different to proceed as one class-action lawsuit.
December 6, 2010: The Supreme Court said it would decide whether the class-action certification violated federal rules for such lawsuits, one of the most important employment discrimination class-action cases in decades.
(Reporting by James Vicini, Editing by John Whitesides)
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Factbox: Key facts in Wal-Mart discrimination case
Here are some facts and allegations that have emerged during the 10-year-old lawsuit.
* A Wal-Mart senior human resources official saw nothing wrong with business meetings at Hooters restaurants, known for its buxom waitresses, lawyers for the plaintiffs said. Numerous Wal-Mart managers admitted they regularly went to strip clubs when attending company management meetings.
Theodore Boutrous, Wal-Mart's lead attorney in the appeal, dismissed such anecdotes as misleading and said they do not reflect company policy. "It's so far from being representative that it's absurd," he told reporters.
* One woman who brought the lawsuit, Christine Kwapnoski, said a male manager "told her to 'doll up,' wear some makeup and to dress a little better." She said he frequently yelled and screamed at her and other female employees, but seldom did that with male employees.
* Wal-Mart said it operated under a general policy that forbids discrimination, encourages diversity and ensures fair treatment. Founded in 1962 and with headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, the retailer employs more than 1.4 million people in the United States, the nation's largest private employer. Wal-Mart had about $419 billion in net sales last year and reported $16.4 billion in net income.
* Founder Sam Walton said in 1992 that Wal-Mart's "old way" of requiring managers to move frequently "put good, smart women at a disadvantage" and was unnecessary, but lawyers for the plaintiffs said the policy remained in effect until after the lawsuit was filed in 2001.
* Wal-Mart said its expert concluded that more than 90 percent of its stores showed no statistical difference in hourly pay rates between men and women with similar jobs.
* The federal judge in San Francisco who originally granted class-action status for the lawsuit was U.S. District Court Judge Martin Jenkins, who was appointed to the bench by President Bill Clinton in 1997.
(Reporting by James Vicini in Washington, Editing by Will Dunham)
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Wal-Mart gets sympathetic court bias case hearing
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Plaintiff Betty Dukes smiles on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court after the class action lawsuit Dukes v. Wal-Mart was argued before the court, March 29, 2011.
Credit: Reuters/Larry Downing
WASHINGTON |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Wal-Mart got a sympathetic hearing from several Supreme Court justices on Tuesday as the retailer sought to prevent female employees from bringing the largest class-action sex-discrimination lawsuit in history.The justices sharply questioned whether more than a million female employees can join together against Wal-Mart Stores Inc, accused of paying women less and giving them fewer promotions.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, a moderate conservative who often casts the decisive vote on the nine-member court, said, "I'm just not sure what the unlawful policy is."
Another justice, Antonin Scalia, said he felt "whipsawed" by the plaintiffs' argument and said they had not made clear whether it was Wal-Mart's corporate culture or local store managers who were allegedly at fault. "Which is it?" he asked.
Scalia questioned if it would be fair to the company, the world's biggest retailer, for the case to proceed. "Is this really due process?" he asked.
Potentially liability could reach billions of dollars.
But even if Wal-Mart loses at the Supreme Court and then at trial, financial analysts said the Bentonville, Arkansas-based company has more than enough cash to make a big payout with little impact on its profits.
A crowd of protesters gathered outside the court, shouting "Fair pay now" and carrying signs such as "Stop discounting the women of Wal-Mart" and "The women of Wal-Mart are not worthless."
Chris Kwapnoski, a 24-year Wal-Mart employee and one of the named plaintiffs in the case, told reporters after the arguments, "We're not going to lose."
She recalled being told by a manager to "brush the cobwebs off" and "doll up" if she wanted advancement.
"Wal-Mart is trying their level best to keep us out of court so the facts will not be presented to the public at large or before a sitting jury," said Betty Dukes, a Wal-Mart employee in Pittsburg, California, who first filed a lawsuit against the retailer in 2001.
Gisel Ruiz, a Wal-Mart executive vice president, said after the arguments, "We continue to have strong anti-discrimination policies in place, a strong record of advancement of women and we are always looking to be better."
The court is likely to make a ruling by late June. The decision could change the legal landscape for workplace and other class-action lawsuits, affecting a similar case against Costco Wholesale Corp.
Shares of Wal-Mart, a component of the Dow Jones industrial average, rose 7 cents to $52.26 on Tuesday.
Businesses say a Wal-Mart defeat could make every large corporation vulnerable to sweeping allegations of employment bias and would water down class-action requirements.
The Supreme Court is only deciding whether the lawsuit can go to trial as a group. If the court rejects the class-action status, the individual women still can sue, both sides in the case say.
Large class-action lawsuits make it easier for big groups of plaintiffs to sue corporations and they have led to huge payouts by tobacco, oil and food companies.
Wal-Mart's attorney, Theodore Boutrous, said female employees in different jobs and in different stores do not have enough in common to be in a single class-action lawsuit.
"It's not fair to anyone to put this all into one big class," he told the justices, adding that the company has a strong policy against discrimination.
Joseph Sellers, an attorney for the women, argued the class-action lawsuit should be allowed to go to trial for a decision on the merits of the claims. "This is an extraordinary case," he said.
Women's groups have said a Wal-Mart victory could signal a significant retreat for women's rights in the workplace.
Companies have sought to limit such lawsuits to individual or small groups of plaintiffs. The Supreme Court, with a conservative majority, has often agreed.
Sanford Bernstein analyst Colin McGranahan said he estimates a settlement could cost roughly $1.5 billion. That equates to 26 cents per Wal-Mart share, or less than 0.5 percent of the company's current share price.
He said Wal-Mart could "easily" fund that through existing liquidity or free cash flow, with less than 1 percent impact on its earnings per share.
Chief Justice John Roberts cited Wal-Mart's policy against discrimination and asked whether its pay disparity between men and women was less than the U.S. average.
The Supreme Court case is Wal-Mart Stores Inc v. Betty Dukes, No. 10-277.
(Additional reporting by Jeremy Pelofsky and Jessica Wohl in Chicago, editing by Philip Barbara)
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