Over the last 24 hours, there’s been a lot written about the Supreme Court’s decision yesterday in Wal-Mart Stores v. Dukes.  Frankly, all of them are starting to say the same thing:  The decision is going to hamper all class-action discrimination cases going forward.

But that statement tends to simplify the decision a bit too much.  In my view, what the decision stands for is that it will be increasingly unlikely that the mega-class action (the one that covers an entire company) will be able to proceed without a very specific and tangible practice or policy that the plaintiffs can point too. 

What types of things are we talking about? Well, it would be unlikely, but suppose a company had a mandatory retirement age of 60 but without a legitimate basis for doing so. In essence, it was a company-wide practice of discriminating against older workers.  That type of class action will probably survive.
Continue Reading Wal-Mart v. Dukes: What The Class-Action Decision Really Means for Employers

Today, The New York Times reported on a privileged memo sent to Wal-Mart from its outside lawfirm back in 1995 that "found widespread gender disparities in pay and promotion at Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club stores and urged the company to take basic steps — like posting every job opening and creating specific goals to promote

Last month, I reported that the U.S. Supreme Court had agreed to hear the case of Huber v. Wal-Mart, to decide whether disabled employees must be reassigned to a vacant position for which they are qualified or merely be permitted to apply for such a position.

Yesterday, however, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to