Supreme Court Unanimously Rejects Class Action Certification in Wal-Mart Sex Discrimination Case

The Supreme Court disappointed progressive activists today with its decision in Wal-Mart v. Dukes. At issue was whether a class-action gender discrimination suit filed on behalf of as many as 1.5 million female Wal-Mart employees could proceed in federal court. All nine justices agreed that the class-action suit at the heart of the case should never have been certified. There was a 5-4 split over the scope of the ruling, with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg writing an opinion (joined by her fellow liberal justices) that concurred in part and dissented in part from Justice Antonin Scalia's majority opinion, but on the question of whether the original class-action suit should have been certified all nine were in agreement.

Marcia Greenberger of the liberal National Women's Law Center quickly attacked the Court for telling employers "that they can rest easy, knowing that the bigger and more powerful they are, the less likely their employees will be able to come together to secure their rights." I'm sure other progressive activists will make similar attacks, though I doubt they'll get very much traction. You can't really spin this one into Citizens United part II when you have the Court's liberals and conservatives joining together to reject what would have been the largest class-action certification in U.S. history.