US apex court rejects Wal-Mart gender bias case on ideological differences

The lawsuit,citing what are now dated figures from 2001,said that women are grossly under-represented among managers,holding just 14 percent of store manager positions compared with more than 80 percent of lower-ranking supervisory jobs that are paid by the hour. Wal-Mart responded that women in its retail stores made up two-thirds of all employees and two-thirds of all managers in 2001.

The suit could have involved up to 1.6 million women,with Wal-Mart facing potentially billions of dollars in damages.

Justice Antonin Scalias opinion for the courts conservative majority said there needs to be common elements tying together literally millions of employment decisions at once,but that in the present lawsuit,That is entirely absent here.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg,writing for the courts four liberal justices,said there was more than enough uniting the claims. Wal-Marts delegation of discretion over pay and promotions is a policy uniform throughout all stores, Ginsburg said.

The courts majority agreed with Wal-Marts argument that being forced to defend the treatment of female employees regardless of the jobs they hold or where they work is unfair.

The ruling could make it much harder to mount similar class-action discrimination lawsuits against large employers.

In a statement,Wal-Mart said,The court today unanimously rejected class certification and,as the majority made clear,the plaintiffs claims were worlds away from showing a company-wide discriminatory pay and promotion policy.