Unanimously overruling the San Francisco-based 9th District Court, the Supreme Court threw out a massive class action sex discrimination case against Walmart. The key issue was whether the one and a half million women hired by Walmart, or who were not hired by Walmart after the case was filed, had enough in common to constitute a legally valid class able to sue. Reuters summarizes: The high court accepted Wal-Mart's main argument that the female employees in different jobs at 3,400 different stores nationwide and with different supervisors do not have enough in common to be lumped together in a single class-action lawsuit. The Supreme Court only decided whether the 10-year-old lawsuit can proceed to trial as a group, not the merits of the sex-discrimination allegations at the heart of the case. Justice Scalia, said there must be significant proof that Wal-Mart operated under a general policy of discrimination. "That is entirely absent here," he said, noting that Wal-Mart's...(Read Full Post)