In the end, it wasn't a verdict that California class action lawyers were entirely unprepared for.  The Supreme Court last month threw out a class-action gender discrimination lawsuit filed by female Wal-Mart workers.  The verdict wasn't so surprising because the Supreme Court has traditionally ruled against large class-action lawsuits.

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the class-action lawsuit, which would have joined more than 1 million female employees of Wal-Mart nationwide, could not proceed.  The lawsuit had alleged that Wal-Mart engaged in rampant discrimination against women, paying female employees lower wages than their male counterparts and discriminating against women when it came to promotions. 

If the class action had been allowed to proceed, it would have brought together employees from more than 3,400 Wal-Mart stores across the country.  However the Supreme Court seems to have bought into Wal-Mart’s argument that grouping diverse women from a large number of stores around the country into a single lawsuit was not fair to the retailer.  Not surprisingly, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has come out in support of the ruling.

If the class-action lawsuit had been allowed to proceed, it would have been the largest such lawsuit ever.  However, the Supreme Court ruling does not prevent the three plaintiffs who were initially part of the lawsuit, from proceeding with their individual claims against Wal-Mart.  Betty Dukes, one of the plaintiffs, is likely to go ahead with her individual claim against Wal-Mart, and is confident of prevailing.  Moreover, lawyers for the plaintiffs say that they're considering other options, including filing smaller class-action lawsuits that have fewer members. 

The Wal-Mart decision is bound to impact class-action lawsuits in the future.  California employment lawyers will be closely monitoring the results of pending class actions like the one against the tobacco industry, to gauge the extent of this impact.