Gender Discrimination

Gender discrimination is a vice that no community should condone. The case, Wal-Mart v. Dukes alleges that Wal-mart took part in a systematic discrimination against women in terms of its promotion and compensation conduct. This case has a long history having begun back in the year 2001. In essence, the allegation by Dukes has faced various legal and logistical challenges that led to the court’s decision to reverse the class certification of the approximated 1.5 million plaintiffs. The Supreme Court’s decision is no doubt going to have a far-reaching effect on American businesses in future whose implications are inevitable.

The plaintiffs involved in this case are solely basing their allegation on employment discrimination among women, but the reality is that facts point out the substantial aspect of class actions. The plaintiff’s pursuit of the court’s judgment against Wal-Mart for injunctive relief, back pay and punitive damages could hold water to some point given that payment and promotion are at the discretion of local managers. However, the Federal Rule of Civil procedure requirement is in question since there is need to prove the commonality requirement, which the Wal-Mart statutory defense has firmly opposed. This is significant given the jurisdiction, that Wal-Mart stands a chance to present its statutory defense. The challenge is the case Wal-Mart v. Duke could not take a class of action just because the employment discrimination involves quite a  huge number of Wal-Mart’s female employees. In essence, it is important to explore the aspect of a defendant’s right to challenge the essentials of individuals’ claims. Correspondingly, a unanimous court stated that it is not practical to deny a defendant the substantive right to challenge the claims by the plaintiffs in a case. To affirm this, the Supreme Court’s decision on the case Wal-Mart v. Duke has clearly avoided the “trial by formula” approach and favored the proof of actual damage in terms of the discrimination that the plaintiffs claim to have been subjected to by the firm (Jackson et al).

The question of commonality is untenable since “questions of law” that indeed Wal-Mart engages in a conduct of discrimination is not proven. Only such a common argument in that nature would grant a possible resolution on a class wide level to determine the falsification or the validation of such allegations. The Supreme Court uses its mandate to pass judgment on cases and critically pass a general message on cases of particular nature. In this case, it is clear that the Supreme Court decision on the case, Wal-Mart v. Duke reflects its attempt to “retune” class certification lines of attack. However, there were implications of legal protection for businesses facing financial claims in a class-action case, affirming that they must be capable of amounting to full defense in trying to ward off. This came about due to the Supreme Court’s decision on the federal court rule 23. Even though the decision of promotions and payments are at the discretion of managers at specific headquarters, the allegation by Dukes that the decisions have been unlawful and impacting negative on women cannot be compacted and argued in the context of a class action (Lyle et al).

First, if the local managers practiced inappropriate allocation of promotions and remuneration, this can only be established on individual basis. A typical promotion would have particular requirements and this calls for a thorough inspection of employees’ qualifications to establish the most suitable candidate. The managers would handle this task, consider the best candidate, and promote him or her accordingly. However, the allegation by Dukes seems to advocate that the company acted under a certain policy of discrimination. There is no proof of this since the managers were not following any policy that promoted discrimination in Wal-Mart management decisions. In fact, there does not exist such a policy. The only corporate policy, which the plaintiffs could refer to is the Wal-Marts’ policy of giving local managers the authority to making promotion decisions. However, the policy exists on the basis of the Title VII claim. Thus, it is noteworthy that a claim could be in existence, but main the concern is that the existence of the claim does not imply that every employee in such a company has an identical claim (oyez.org). In conclusion, a critical approach on the issue would likely lead to the finding that the scope of the Wal-Mart and its physical size and geographical stretch is unlikely to have managers in different headquarters making similar decisions unless there was a policy to direct them as such.