Supreme Court Sides With Wal-Mart In Sex Bias Case - Polidicks

[quote] WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court on Monday blocked a massive sex discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart on behalf of female employees in a decision that makes it harder to mount large-scale bias claims against the nation's biggest companies. The justices all agreed that the lawsuit against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. could not proceed as a class action in its current form, reversing a decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. By a 5-4 vote along ideological lines, the court said there were too many women in too many jobs at Wal-Mart to wrap into one lawsuit. The lawsuit could have involved up to 1.6 million women, with Wal-Mart facing potentially billions of dollars in damages. Now, the handful of women who brought the case may pursue their claims on their own, with much less money at stake and less pressure on Wal-Mart to settle. Two of the named plaintiffs, Christine Kwapnoski and Betty Dukes, attended the argument. Kwapnoski is an assistant manager at a Sam's Club in Concord, Calif. Dukes is a greeter at the Walmart in Pittsburg, Calif. 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 companywide discriminatory pay and promotion policy." Dukes and Kwapnoski said they were disappointed in the ruling, but vowed to push ahead with their claims. Both women spoke on a conference call with reporters. "We still are determined to go forward to present our case in court. We believe we will prevail there," Dukes said. "All I have to say is when I go back to work tomorrow, I'm going to let them know we are still fighting," Kwapnoski. Marcia D. Greenberger, co-president of the National Women's Law Center, said "the court has told employers that they can rest easy, knowing that the bigger and more powerful they are, the less likely their employees will be able to join together to secure their rights." The high court's majority agreed with Wal-Mart's argument that being forced to defend the treatment of female employees regardless of the jobs they hold or where they work is unfair. Justice Antonin Scalia's opinion for the court's conservative majority said there need to be common elements tying together "literally millions of employment decisions at once." But Scalia said that in the lawsuit against the nation's largest private employer, "That is entirely absent here." Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the court's four liberal justices, said there was more than enough uniting the claims. "Wal-Mart's delegation of discretion over pay and promotions is a policy uniform throughout all stores," Ginsburg said. Business interests lined up with Wal-Mart while civil rights, women's and consumer groups have sided with the women plaintiffs. Both sides have painted the case as extremely consequential. The business community has said that a ruling for the women would lead to a flood of class-action lawsuits based on vague evidence. Supporters of the women feared that a decision in favor of Wal-Mart could remove a valuable weapon for fighting all sorts of discrimination. Said Greenberger: "The women of Wal-Mart, together with women everywhere, will now face a far steeper road to challenge and correct pay and other forms of discrimination in the workplace." The lawsuit, citing what are now dated figures from 2001, said that women are grossly underrepresented 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 company also has said its policies prohibit discrimination and that it has taken steps since the suit was filed to address problems, including posting job openings electronically. [/quote]1999 - Supreme Court lets Glass-Steagall get jettisoned. 2001 - Supreme Court lets in George Dubya Bush. 2001-Present - Supreme Court silent on the "Patriot" Act. 2009 - SCOTUS decides DNA evidence can no longer free the wrongly convicted. 2010- SCOTUS decides corporations can buy politicians and elections. 2011 - Supreme Court gives a big middle finger to American workers. Gotta love this Supreme Court. Source: [URL]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/20/supreme-court-wal-mart-ruling_n_880348.html[/URL]

Let me guess, 5 republican appointed judges and 4 democrat appointed judges?

[quote]2009 - SCOTUS decides DNA evidence can no longer free the wrongly convicted.[/quote] What

[quote]2009 - SCOTUS decides DNA evidence can no longer free the wrongly convicted.[/quote] Are you fucking kidding me?

Isn't the role of the Supreme Court to interpret the constitution? I'm unfamiliar with the US legal system

[QUOTE=Sniping Robot;30627791]Isn't the role of the Supreme Court to interpret the constitution? I'm unfamiliar with the US legal system[/QUOTE] To interpret the Constitution is the job of the entire Judicial branch, at the head of which is the Supreme Court. They are the highest, highest court in the nation. When a new justice is appointed it's a big deal. When they say something, it's pretty damn important.

[QUOTE=Sniping Robot;30627791]Isn't the role of the Supreme Court to interpret the constitution? I'm unfamiliar with the US legal system[/QUOTE] In a history textbook, maybe. Now they serve no purpose but to push the agenda of whoever appointed them.

[QUOTE=staticman;30627706]2010- SCOTUS decides corporations can buy politicians and elections[/QUOTE] What?

If you actually look into this case, the plaintiff didn't have a chance in the law suit and all the justices agreed that the case be thrown out. Logically, you have to assume that even if 1,000 women proved they were discriminated against, this does not at all prove that the 1,599,999,000 other women had also been discriminated against. They tried to prove that all these other people were discriminated out through pay and management statistics, but that doesn't necessarily prove that all women in the lawsuit were discriminated against. Honestly, this case is just ridiculous. Throwing out the case doesn't mean Wal-Mart hasn't discriminated, what it does mean it the the people who have been discriminated against need to come back and make their case on a smaller scale. [QUOTE=ThisGuy0;30630182]What?[/QUOTE] They decided that corporations shouldn't be banned from donating to campaigns and that they shouldn't have a dollar limit. It is essential to also realize that this decision also applies to unions. Unions donate far more to campaign contribution than businesses. All this means that you have to be for or against both. Also, there was a previous ruling that decided that corporations can be treated like a single individual. What many people don't say or realize is that this ruling also applies to unions.

[QUOTE=Sir Whoopsalot;30627776]Are you fucking kidding me?[/QUOTE] I had to do some research on this one: [url]http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/18/AR2009061801610.html[/url] It's not they won't accept a DNA test, but that convicted criminals don't have the right to have it done in the first place because they are convicted. Which means if you're wrongfully convicted, you're fucked.

[QUOTE=staticman;30627706]2009 - SCOTUS decides DNA evidence can no longer free the wrongly convicted.[/QUOTE] What the fuck is going on over there

First, corporations are awarded rights as "individuals," now this? Corporatism doesn't exactly have the most subtle of approaches, does it?

[QUOTE=Pepin;30636732] They decided that corporations shouldn't be banned from donating to campaigns and that they shouldn't have a dollar limit. It is essential to also realize that this decision also applies to unions. Unions donate far more to campaign contribution than businesses. All this means that you have to be for or against both. Also, there was a previous ruling that decided that corporations can be treated like a single individual. What many people don't say or realize is that this ruling also applies to unions.[/QUOTE] Great.... So this means our elections can be neck deep in advertisement bullshit? Thats all I need is these sorry D-List soap opera celebrities (politicans) all dressed up in their respective coat decorated with about a billion patches for each company that contributed towards them. Fuck that.

Class Lawsuit that involves gender? No way.

Well this is bullshit.:suicide:

[QUOTE=Richard Simmons;30638348]So this means our elections can be neck deep in advertisement bullshit? Thats all I need is these sorry D-List soap opera celebrities (politicans) all dressed up in their respective coat decorated with about a billion patches for each company that contributed towards them.[/QUOTE] Again, realize that it just doesn't apply to businesses, rather it applies to any collective group including unions, non profit organizations, think tanks, and so on. I think the logic used to support it is pretty strong. A group of individuals can donate to a campaign A corporation is a group of individuals A corporation can donate to a campaign Note that this is in the form of a valid argument in which a can do x b is a therefore b can do x For the argument not to be true, you must either prove that a corporation is not a group of individuals, or argue that any group of individuals should not be allowed to donate to a campaign. To address the second you must distinguish the difference between a group of people who join together for a common cause and a group of individuals who vote independently for a cause. Only individuals should be allowed to lobby/argue for a cause Any group of people is not an individual Any group of people should not be allowed to lobby/argue for a cause I don't think anyone would agree with this, the reason being that the logic is generalized. People can support the logic when it is Only individuals should be allowed to lobby/argue for a cause Corporations are not an individual Corporations should not be allowed to lobby/argue for a cause But can't when it is generalized to apply to groups of which they would not support such logic being applied to. The above doesn't so much retort the second premise but rather makes it specific as to what the results would be if you were to accept the premise as true. So to provide a more direct response, you have to prove why a group of people can not be considered an individual. The obvious response for this is that the phrasing of the premise is made to self evaluate to true which I believe is called begging the question (not in the sense that the premise supports the conclusion but rather that the premise supports the premise; I may not be right on what kind of fallacy it is). So to fix this fallacy, the premise much be changed from "Any group of people is not an individual" to "a group of people is not a group of individuals" which is much harder to argue against. But if you want, you can go down that road and make the distinction that there is a large difference between people acting independently from a group and a people acting as apart of a group. The logical repercussions of such an argument are huge and likely not to be accepted by anyone. So to conclude this post that has gone on for too long, yes it may be annoying, but you have to accept all of the logical implications if you believe that they should not have the right.