Class or No Class?

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the Walmart v. Dukes case that has recently come out of the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals. The case handled by the 9^th Circuit determined that there was mass discrimination against female employees within the Wal-Mart corporation. However, the Supreme Court is ruling on whether the class action used to bring suit against Wal-Mart is legitimate.

A class action is when a lawsuit is brought by a single member of a group of people on behalf of the entire group. The argument supporting the plaintiff is that that this claim is a common enough occurrence and can plausibly have common ground, regardless of its size and diversity of location. The argument supporting the defendant is that this claim is being made by too diverse a group of people, who have little in common except the fact that they are women.

Class actions give the general population, like the women filing suit, the ability to have a significant chance at taking large corporations Wal-Mart to court and being able to properly challenge them. It allows less wealthy groups to pool their resources and eliminate a large corporation’s ability to tie up litigation in legal fees that prevent the plaintiff from continuing to pursue legal action. People, like the ones suing Wal-Mart, have the ability to protect their own rights, rather than rely upon larger organizations to protect their rights for them.

The idea of a class action is reminiscent of the founder’s desire to protect the minority from being overrun by the elite, or majority. Just as the checks and balances act as barriers to the elite from taking control of the government and oppressing the minority, class actions give the minority the necessary tools to protect their rights from being infringed upon.