Supreme Court blocks huge sex-bias class action against Wal-Mart

The U.S. Supreme Court has blocked a mammoth lawsuit against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. , according to news reports.
The New York Times reports that the high court ruled unanimously Monday, reversing a decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco that allowed the class action against the nation’s largest retailer to advance.
Monday’s ruling does not bar the suit’s original plaintiffs from pursuing claims against Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT), but the suit cannot proceed as a class action, which is likely to limit the amount of money at stake, the Times said.

Had the Supreme Court decided otherwise, the suit would have been the largest employment class action in U.S. history, involving as many as 1.5 million current and former female workers at Wal-Mart, which operates which operates Walmart and Sam’s Club stores, and potentially involving billions of dollars in back pay and potential damages.
The suit, a piece of which dates back 10 years, alleges that Wal-Mart discriminated against the women on pay and advancement.
The Supreme Court heard arguments March 29 on whether to allow the suit to move ahead as a class action. Last December, it agreed to review the case after the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 6-5 that it could advance as a class action.
Wal-Mart objected to the case being allowed as a class action because of its immense size, and because the women in question worked at thousands of different stores and different issues are involved.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce filed a brief siding with Wal-Mart, saying that allowing the class-action suit to go forward “would bury American businesses in abusive class-action lawsuits to the detriment of consumers, the U.S. economy and the judicial system itself.”