Norton Urges EEOC to Pursue Alternative Approaches in Wal-Mart Case Brought by Female Employees

Norton Urges EEOC to Pursue Alternative Approaches in Wal-Mart Discrimination Case Brought by Female Employees

June 20, 2011

WASHINGTON, DC-- Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), a former chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), spoke with the EEOC's current chair, Jacqueline Barren, today concerning the way forward after the Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling this morning against female employees of Wal-Mart in a class action lawsuit. Norton said that Wal-Mart's uniform policy of delegating complete discretion over pay and promotion to managers, its centralized personnel system, and its gross underrepresentation of women in managerial positions should have been enough to qualify the case for class action treatment. "Perhaps it should be no surprise that the Roberts court, whose equal pay decision in the Ledbetter case had to be reversed by Congress, would issue another corporate-friendly ruling in a pay case," said Norton. "EEOC realizes that it would be difficult, if not impossible, for the Wal-Mart employees to file individually, because of the expense of litigation. I hope that the EEOC will look at the hundreds of class action cases that have been brought on a nationwide basis and at the possibility of EEOC-initiated pattern and practice cases to give as much relief to the Wal-Mart women as the facts may justify."