Wal-Mart, Big Polluters Get Big Wins Courtesy U.S. Supreme Court

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The United States Supreme Court handed down two controversial decisions on Monday that, together, embody the rightward shift of the court and the hesitation of justices to oppose some of America’s largest corporations.

The most important ruling from the Court on Monday was in a blockbuster case involving a class action lawsuit against Wal-Mart alleging gender discrimination.  The case was the largest of its kind in history, filed ten years ago with over 1.5 million participants, all female Wal-Mart employees.

A lower court allowed the class action to proceed, but Wal-Mart, consistently ranked at or near the top of America’s largest corporate entities, fought to have the out thrown out because of the large number of participants.

NPR detailed the basics of the case.

The class action lawsuit was filed against Wal-Mart 10 years ago on behalf of a half-dozen female workers and 1.5 million other women in similar situations. A federal judge, after hearing evidence, certified the class to proceed to trial, and Wal-Mart appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, contending that the case is simply too big to be handled in one fell swoop.

Standing on the steps of the Supreme Court, Betty Dukes, the lead plaintiff, said Wal-Mart’s appeal is an attempt to “keep us out of court so the facts will not be presented to the public at large or before a sitting jury.”

Those facts, say the plaintiffs, show that when the case was filed 10 years ago, women held two-thirds of the lowest-level hourly jobs and only one-third of the management jobs; and that women were paid on average $1.16 less per hour than men in the same jobs, despite having more seniority and higher performance ratings.

Wal-Mart, however, hotly disputes those statistics, contending that there is no pay difference between men and women at 90 percent of its stores. And the company points to what it repeatedly calls its “strong policy” against discrimination.

Less than three months later, the Supreme Court has decided in Wal-Mart’s favor, ruling that the class action lawsuit was invalid because there needed to be more proof that the million-plus participants in the suit had grievances that were connected. The Christian Science Monitor described the ruling as a “major victory for Wal-Mart and much of corporate America,” a familiar refrain after many recent Supreme Court decisions.

Justice Antonin Scalia, writing the majority opinion, said that there needed to be “glue” that held the “alleged reasons” for discrimination by Wal-Mart together.

It’s a landmark decision that will forever alter the process of class action against businesses or corporations, making it much moire difficult for large numbers of citizens to collectively seek justice in a manner far more powerful than individual lawsuits.

In other words, Wal-Mart was given a pass because too many women were discriminated against, rather than a smaller figure. Because Wal-Mart’s discrimination was alleged to be so widespread, the company is taken off the hook.

In a major victory for Wal-Mart and much of corporate America, the US Supreme Court on Monday dismissed the largest gender discrimination class action lawsuit in history.

In a 5 to 4 opinion, the justices reversed a lower court decision allowing as many as 1.5 million female workers to sue the nation’s biggest private employer for back pay and punitive damages that could have totaled billions of dollars.

The decision makes it more difficult for employees and others to join together in a common lawsuit unless they are able to clearly identify a common injury, such as a company-wide discriminatory policy.

In a ruling on a secondary aspect of the case, all nine justices agreed that the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco erred in allowing the massive class action lawsuit to move forward on claims seeking back pay.

“The Supreme Court’s ruling should surprise no one,” said Anthony Sabino, a law professor at St. John’s University. “Class actions are predicated on ‘common questions.’ A class of millions of disgruntled employees is just too vast to present a handful of questions that are fundamental to each and every one of them,” he said. “This is especially true for employment decisions that turn on so many idiosyncrasies of individual workers and their managers.”

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In reaching its decision, the high court rejected what it called “Trial by Formula.”Writing for five members of the court, Justice Antonin Scalia said that under federal rules of civil procedure the class action lawsuit again Wal-Mart should not have been approved because it lacked a single common question tying each employee’s claims together for efficient resolution in a single trial.“Here respondents wish to sue about literally millions of employment decisions at once,” Justice Scalia wrote. “Without some glue holding the alleged reasons for all those decisions together, it will be impossible to say that examination of all the class members’ claims for relief will produce a common answer to the crucial question why was I disfavored.”

The Court has given near-immunity to major corporations in cases where class action suits are presented, and specifically where a group of people allege discrimination or some other situation that is not a black-and-white company policy or action. The Nation’s John Nichols says the Court has created a new segment of corporate America; the “Too Big for Justice” corporation, not unlike the “too big to fail” bank.

And you thought “Too Big to Fail” banks were a problem. Now, the U.S. Supreme Court has created a new protected class: The “Too Big for Justice” corporations.

But the US Supreme Court’s ruling on the Wal-Mart discrimination case was not the only gift handed out to major American corporations on Monday.  The Court ruled in a unanimous decision that energy companies are immune from state lawsuits that seek to force those companies to cut emissions at coal-burning power plants in six states.

Agreeing with the Obama administration and the major utility companies targeted by the state lawsuits, the eight sitting justices (Sonia Sotomayor recused herself) decided that only the Environmental Protection Agency can regulate greenhouse gases or force state and local utilities to cut emissions.

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a global warming lawsuit against five big power companies, its most important environmental ruling since 2007 and a victory for the utilities and the Obama administration.

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Ginsburg said the EPA is currently engaged in making rules to decide whether it should set limits on emissions from domestic power plants.