Court, Alas, To Hear Wal-Mart Discrimination Case

It’s hard to imagine anything good coming from the Supreme Court’s decision to grant cert in the Wal-Mart class action discrimination case.   Republican Supreme Court Justices have been crucial to the long-running Republican project of nominally keeping civil rights statutes on the books while making them as difficult as possible to enforce in practice.  This case seems all-too-likely to create a precedent that will make it more difficult for employees who have been discriminated against to get remedies in court.   The ability to file class-action suits (and obtain monetary damages) are critical not only to vindicating rights violations but to create incentives that inhibit future discrimination.

At least the case doesn’t concern whether or not gender discrimination occurred per se.   I’m not looking forward to the day when Chief Justice Roberts announces that “the way to stop discrimination on the basis of gender is to stop inquiring about whether corporations discriminate on the basis of gender.”   But this news is bad enough.