Wal-Mart will be making its way to the U.S. Supreme Court after the high court agreed Monday to hear an appeal claiming the company discriminated against hundreds of thousands of women in pay and promotion opportunities.
The Supreme Court will not be deciding on whether or not discrimination took place but rather whether the plethora of individual claims can be combined as class action lawsuit. The court’s decision on that issue will almost certainly affect all sorts of class-action suits, including ones asserting antitrust, securities and, products liability and other claims.
In one of the biggest discrimination cases in recent history, this lawsuit seeks back pay that could amount to billions of dollars.