Belkira wrote:
So, had it been a million women that were discriminated against and spoke up, you'd be ok with it?
Of course. Because there would actually be a million women with claims of being discriminated against, instead of just a handful in a company which employs over two million people. See, a "class action lawsuit" is intended for cases where a large number of people are affected by something. It should not be used where a very very tiny number of people claim to be affected but you attempt to make a mountain out of said molehill.
Which, btw, is what the Supreme Court agreed on unanimously.
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And the "broader agenda" seems to be the same as the smaller agenda... ending sexual discrimination.
Sure. And if a million women had been discriminated against on the basis of their gender, you'd have a valid argument. But they weren't.
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gbaji wrote:
You get that they basically used these women, right?
No, I don't.
Ok. Let me spell it out for you. Had each woman filed her own lawsuit on the ground of discrimination, each case would be judged on its own merit. So if Sally was hit on by her boss, denigrated, called names, and passed up for promotion, she'd have a strong case and likely get quite a bit of cash. But maybe Jennie just didn't get as big a raise as she thought she wanted, and well... she's not a very good employee and is late all the time, talks back to the customers, and perhaps didn't actually deserve the raise she thought she did. And 50 other women at the same store have no complaints and can't be shown to be treated any differently than the men.
With a class action lawsuit, what you're doing is arguing not on the grounds of each individual case, but attempting to show that the company as a whole has institutionalized policies which discriminate (or harm in some way)
everyone in some manner. So all women are affected by sexual discrimination, for example. Or all customers were harmed by a faulty product. Whatever. What happens is that a law firm bundles all the cases they have into one case and if they win, there's a huge settlement. But that settlement is divided among every single named person. Which in this case would be every female working at WalMart (which is something like 1.4 million.
The result is that each person gets like $50 or so. So Sally gets screwed.
See how that works?