Supreme Court to hear Walmart suit
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Christine Kwapnoski, an assistant manager with Sam’s Club in Concord, Calif., is one of the named plaintiffs in a class action sex discrimination suit against Walmart. ASSOCIATED PRESS |
WASHINGTON — Christine Kwapnoski hasn’t done too badly in nearly 25 years in the Walmart family, making more than $60,000 a year in a job she enjoys most days.
But Kwapnoski says she faced obstacles at Walmart-owned Sam’s Club stores in both Missouri and California: Men making more than women and getting promoted faster.
She never heard a supervisor tell a man, as she says one told her, to “doll up” or “blow the cobwebs off” her make-up.
Once she got over the fear she might be fired, she joined what has turned into the largest job discrimination lawsuit ever.
The 46-year-old single mother of two is one of the named plaintiffs in a suit that will be argued at the Supreme Court on Tuesday. At stake is whether the suit can go forward as a class action that could involve 500,000 to 1.6 million women, according to varying estimates, and potentially could cost the world’s largest retailer billions of dollars.
But the case’s potential importance issue goes well beyond the Walmart dispute, as evidenced by more than two dozen briefs filed by business interests on Walmart’s side, and civil rights, consumer and union groups on the other.
The question is crucial to the viability of discrimination claims, which become powerful vehicles to force change when they are presented together, instead of individually. Class actions increase pressure on businesses to settle suits because of the cost of defending them and the potential for very large judgments.
Columbia University law professor John Coffee said the high court could bring a virtual end to employment discrimination class actions filed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, depending on how it decides the Wal-Mart case.
“Litigation brought by individuals under Title VII is just too costly,” Coffee said. “It’s either class action or nothing.”
Illustrating the value of class actions, Brad Seligman, the California-based lawyer who conceived of and filed the suit 10 years ago, said the average salary for a woman at Walmart was $13,000, about $1,100 less than the average for a man, when the case began. “That’s hugely significant if you’re making $13,000 a year, but not enough to hire a lawyer and bring a case.”
The company has fought the suit every step of the way, Seligman said, because it is the “biggest litigation threat Walmart has ever faced.”
A trial judge and the federal appeals court in San Francisco, over a fierce dissent, said the suit could go forward.
But Walmart wants the high court to stop the suit in its tracks. The company argues it includes too many women with too many different positions in its 3,400 stores across the country. Walmart says its policies prohibit discrimination and that most management decisions are made at the store and regional levels, not at its Bentonville, Ark., headquarters.
Theodore J. Boutrous, Walmart’s California-based lawyer, said there is no evidence women are poorly treated at Walmart. “The evidence is the contrary of that,” Boutrous said.
The company is not conceding any woman has faced discrimination, but says that if any allegations are proven, they are isolated. “People will make errors,” said Gisel Ruiz, Walmart’s executive vice president for people, as the company calls its human resources unit. “People are people.”
Ruiz paints a very different picture of the opportunities offered women at Walmart. She joined the company straight from college in 1992.
“In less than four years, I went from an assistant manager trainee to running my own store,” she said. “I’m one of thousands of women who have had a positive experience at Walmart.”
