High-stakes Wal-mart Case Before U.s. Supreme Court

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the much-anticipated potential class-action sexual discrimination lawsuit, Dukes v. Wal-Mart.

It’s a story we previewed for you last week. Today, numerous news accounts indicated that the court split among gender lines in the hearing, which will determine if the case will move forward as a class-action or if it will proceed piecemeal through individual cases.

Wal-Mart favors the latter since the former could involve more than a million plaintiffs and cost billions to defend or settle.

Bloomberg News reports on the court’s questioning:

Today’s arguments suggested the court might divide roughly along gender lines itself, with the three female justices — Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — emerging as perhaps the strongest supporters of the class action. Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Samuel Alito voiced skepticism.

“Your complaint faces in two directions,” Kennedy, often the court’s swing vote, told the workers’ lawyers. “You said this is a culture where Arkansas knows, the headquarters knows, everything that’s going on. Then in the next breath, you say, well, now these supervisors have too much discretion. It seems to me there’s an inconsistency there, and I’m just not sure what the unlawful policy is.”

You can read more at this link.