Women lose Wal-Mart lawsuit fight

The US Supreme Court has ruled that a group of women claiming discrimination against US retail giant Wal-Mart may not seek a class action lawsuit.

The court ruled that women who said they were paid less because of their gender must pursue legal action individually.

Plaintiffs had sought to unite more than a million women in their effort.

Wal-Mart denied the accusation and said female employees across the US had no grounds for a class action.

‘Literally millions’

On Monday, the court overturned a ruling by a lower appeals court that 1.5 million women who had worked at Wal-Mart retail stores could unite in the class action suit.

The women, led by a group of named plaintiffs, sought back pay and punitive damages for the class of women, saying the company passed female employees over for promotion and paid them less.

Their suit relied on statistical evidence about pay disparities between male and female employees and anecdotal reports of individual cases of discrimination.

“Here, [the group of women employees] wish to sue about literally millions of employment decisions at once,” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote.

“Without some glue holding the alleged reasons for all those decisions together, it will be impossible to say that examination of all the class members’ claims for relief will produce a common answer to the crucial question ‘why was I disfavoured.'”

Mr Scalia also noted that Wal-Mart’s written policy did not allow gender discrimination, and did not have any testing procedure or evaluation method that could be shown to be biased.