Not for the first time, Slate legal writer Dahlia Lithwick misdescribes the Supreme Court’s Walmart decision. “Start with one of the most important cases of the term, the recently deceased class-action suit filed by a million and a half women employed by Wal-Mart.” No. One and a half million women did not file a lawsuit. Lawyers sought to represent them and were rebuffed. That was the meat of the case.
It gets worse. “Then Scalia went one further and offered Wal-Mart, the largest private employer in the country, a virtual guidebook on how to discriminate better: Do it in bulk up and down the chain of command, and make certain to do it at every possible level. . . . The greatest impact of the Wal-Mart decision isn’t the blow dealt to class-action suits. It’s the guidance it provides employers: Immunize yourself from claims of gender discrimination with a written policy that says “we don’t discriminate” and a system of decentralized decision-making” (emphasis in original).
So if a company allows decentralized decision-making on personnel issues, that amounts to discrimination “up and down the chain of command” — moreover, to a deliberate decision to engage in discrimination. Not even the liberal justices on the court bought that idea. Nobody reading this article would have any idea of what the Walmart case was actually about.
Lithwick is a disgrace. She is either too stupid to understand a supreme court decision, or she is a liar. Either way, how does she keep her job? (never mind, she's a liar for the left, that's OK). The "de-centralized" point is that Walmart's system of decentralized management as a matter of fact did not permit a common course of conduct against the class sufficient to permit either injunctive relief or a nationwide damages class against, essentially, every Walmart in every jurisdiction. Each independent region acted differently. This is not a technicality, it is, at bottom, a question of liability. Simply, the class action they attempted was faulty.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis does not even obviate INDIVIDUAL claims against Wal-Mart, nor a narrower class claim, e.g., a class claim alleging that an individual manager impermissibly discriminated against women via explicit, concrete acts, which of course would attach liability to Wal-Mart via respondeat superior.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDahlia Lithwick proves so well that most of our scribes for mainstream outlets are grossly uneducated.
She doesn't understand at all:
1) Our legal system;
2) How class-action suits work;
3) How corporate decisions get made.
See, to the chic among us, like Doll-ya here, such things are, like, so totally, like, uncool to understand. So, like every other facet of human existence, the issues in the WalMart case get reduced to a fiction:
Big company against worthless, helpless saps. And, of course, being the height of chic, Doll-ya babe sides with those she spits upon as helpless saps.
Dontcha just see and feel the compassion? Well, I'm sure compassionate. I really am sorry that there are people as stupid as Doll-ya called upon to explain those things they don't even begin to comprehend.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI read a pop culture blog that often detours into politics. He's constantly linking to Dahlia Lithwick. It's sad.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI love how Doll-ya ignores the 8-1 nature of the majority opinion, and pins her tail from her made up donkey upon Scalia only.
"Oh! Hey, um, maddy, that's proof of her objectivity. DUH!"
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWalMart = Greedy, zealous thieves who ruin peoples' lives to make a buck.
Class-Action Trial Lawyers = powerless, hapless victims of life's "unfair lottery", benevolently shouldering the burdens of others.
All we need now is for Tattoo to make an appearance and wave to Doll-ya amid the whirling propellers.
It's a long flight I hear, from Fantasy Island to the nearest elementary school library.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI have plenty of Democrat and even liberal friends. Plenty.
We disagree on politics, but most of them at least present their opinions intelligently, and reasonably, and I respect them for that.
I say this to prove that what I'm about to say has NOTHING to do with our differences in politics:
Dahlia Lithwick is the worst legal writer in America. The absolute, awful, unbelieveable worst.
I don't recall ever reading a column of hers that didn't feature at least one legal howler, if not many, to accompany her hack politics (which, again, I'm leaving aside here).
Bottom line: Dahlia Lithwick is to legal writing what E.J. Dionne is to political writing. Those of you who suffer both writers will recognize the wisdom of that analogy.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDemocrats are blinded by their irrational hatred for WalMart. Their argument are incoherent, based on "feelings" and not based on the facts. They will believe, and say, anything bad about WalMart.
It's totally pointless to even talk to liberals about WalMart. They don't care what the facts are, they just blindly hate the company. My mother in law worked for Sam's Club for 20 years, and at the end of that time was making $17 an hour as a food demonstration person (the person that makes food samples and hands them out). Sam's was very good to her and paid her MUCH better than any other job she's had.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe one thing non-liberals have learned the hard and discouraging way is that opposition to the liberal point of view is never the result of different voices in a free society expressing different points of view, but rather is the result of racism, bigotry, civil rights violations and just plain evil. Compare the words spoken by Democrats to the words spoken by Republicans during the debate of any contentious issue and you know this is true.
For instance, Paul Ryan prepared a budget plan and explained in great detail how it would work to strengthen our economy and deal with unsustainable entitlement programs. In addition, he provided facts and statistics to support his plan. In response, Democrats didn't offer a better budget plan or refute Ryan's facts and statistics, but rather accused him of wanting children, poor people and the elderly to be thrown into the street to die.
Republicans seldom accuse Democrats or their supporters of being bad people with evil intent, but Democrats frequently make that claim about Republicans and their supporters. Evil oil companies, fat cats on Wall Street, greedy corporate jet owners, millionaires and billionaires who don't pay their fair share. Review the President's recent press conference on the economy and you will find numerous references to the bad faith of Republicans and not one single reference to a legitimate difference of opinion.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSlate is now being published in the bizarro universe where the problem with Pres. Obama is that he's a stealth Republican and the problem with the economy is that people are too stupid to know how good they have it, unless they actually have it good, then they're evil as well as stupid. (Everything non-Slate is stupid at Slate).
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMs. Lithwick slips seamlessly between snark and outright lying; her readers can't tell which she's intending at any given point, and I'm not sure she can either. For the last several years, she's been the least trustworthy legal commentator in America -- a neat trick for a Canadian-born non-practicing lawyer, especially considering she has competition as stiff as the Jeffreys (Toobin & Rosen). I wrote about a particularly pernicious lie she spread about then-SCOTUS nominee John Roberts in 2005 here and here.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseStrikes me as a combination of two things:
1) women who say they've suffered discrimination are never wrong; and
2) It's friggin' WalMart.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Lawyers sought to represent them"
Let's clarify that. In actuality, the lawyers sought to claim that they knew what those women's *interests* were, and thereby to dragoon them into a group which they (the lawyers) represented.
They never intended to actually represent those one and a half million women*. They intended to represent a way of thinking that required lots and lots of warm bodies to make that way of thinking appear correct. (bandwagon fallacy)
[* Was the half woman only partly represented - perhaps there's some gender confusion at issue? Does the half woman only get half the settlement the others get? Does her lawyer get the full compensation, since he should have only put in half the man-hours on her part of the case? Yes, I know it's pedantic, but this *IS* WFB's publication, and there's a standard to maintain. (Kudos to Ramesh for not falling for her linguistic lackadaisicalness.)]
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